Nottingham boasts two top universities, but how often do most of us come across their work? Who is able to decide what gets researched, and what tangible results does it all deliver for local people? We find out more about Universities for Nottingham’s Co(l)laboratory project, which aims to close the gap between academia and communities.
In challenging and cash-strapped times for the city, the role our two major universities play in the local area has never been more vital to Nottingham and Nottinghamshire. But the research they do is often seen as something that happens in remote places, outside of daily life and separate from its immediate community.
A project from Nottingham Trent University and the University of Nottingham, via their groundbreaking Universities for Nottingham (UfN) partnership, seeks to change all that.
Co(l)laboratory (CoLab), now in its second year, is a pioneering eight year, £5.1m project supported by Research England. Whereas research priorities are normally set from on high, CoLab is trying out a new, bottom-up approach to investigating local problems and solutions. Here, community partners with local knowledge of issues, not national or international funders, are at the forefront of designing the research questions.
By innovating and problem solving in the communities on which they depend, and placing those local skills and experiences at the forefront, CoLab aims to bring academia down to earth, and offers an opportunity to give these massive institutions new relevance to their host communities. CoLab teams also have access to a suite of high tech tools at ‘City as Lab’ on University of Nottingham’s Castle Meadow Campus, which include a scaled 3D model of Nottingham and high-powered projector which can visually map data onto the city.
And as we’ll hear, you don’t even need to have an academic background to apply to take up the research posts - your lived experience in the chosen subject might be just what they’re looking for…
Meeting local challenges with local knowledge
CoLab is “about trying to solve local challenges and issues that are important to local people, through research which is developed with people, for people,” Dr Matthew Young, UfN Co(l)laboratory Manager, explains.
“One of the main ways that we are trying to make a difference is by developing PhD projects with the community. We then call for local people to apply to and take part to carry out that research and earn themselves a PhD degree.”
Dr Young hopes the project will help drive change in the way universities function at the local level. “Nottingham’s universities have a lot of talented people and knowledge. We’re big organisations that are deeply connected to our local communities. We want to start putting our resources together to try and make a difference to those communities and try to advance the causes in our region”.
“The university landscape is changing, along with the government and economic landscapes, so the universities are trying to work together to be more responsive to our local communities”, Dr Young continues. “Even though we take up a lot of physical space, and employ a lot of people, universities have been seen as separate from their local towns and cities. The lines of communication haven’t been really strong. So what UfN is trying to do is redress that and recognise our civic responsibility to our local environment, and our part in building and sustaining our local communities.”
The big difference between the normal route to a PhD of doing a degree then a masters first, is that they’re not looking only for studied academics to take these projects on - if you have experience in the field, you could study without having walked the traditional academic path. The degrees are funded too, so you’ll be paid to study without mounting student debt, removing another obvious barrier for many people. That comes with added benefits for the research itself, and the universities too…
“We know that having more diversity of experience and thought, and people from different backgrounds, makes research stronger, because you have different types of thinking. This makes the research and the type of work that comes out of research much stronger, more impactful, and more useful to the problems we're trying to address. So we’re inviting people to apply and to tell us the breadth of their volunteering, professional, personal experience, and then we are able to assess them based on that holistic picture, rather than just their qualifications.”
Research, refreshed
The research topics themselves are developed and proposed by community partners, and aren’t your stereotypical ‘scientist tinkering with obscure nanofibers in a dark room’ scenario.
Co(l)laboratory’s 2024 projects include ‘Exploring the history of Black social housing activism in Nottingham and its implications for future literature, policy and practice’, ‘To paddle or not to paddle? Examining microbial contamination and risk to communities in Nottingham’s rivers’, and ‘Improving Children’s Mental Health through School-based Music and Dance Programmes’.
A PhD candidate who joined the original 2023 cohort is Hannah Burrows, a teacher with thirteen years’ classroom experience, who’s working on a project called ‘Diversifying Child Friendly Nottingham: Perspectives from Primary School-Aged Children’. The community partner is Nottingham City Council, but Hannah says the bulk of her research will be working via those partners of the council who are directly engaged in the children’s services space.
Why this topic? “Child Friendly Nottingham is a project that emphasises that children need respect as citizens, and as they don't have the same kind of political voice that adults have, adults have to advocate for children and children need to be given more of a say in decisions which effect them”, Hannah explains. “Child Friendly Cities is looking at redesigning how the city is governed, so that the impact that it has on children becomes much more of a central focus. So the council is really starting to think about how its decision making processes impact children, and how it can be more beneficial for children. My research will be focussed on getting primary school-aged children’s perspectives on what they want and need in their city and how they feel about Child Friendly Nottingham”.
For Hannah, the project opened a door to research, something she hadn’t previously considered after taking her degree and PGCE (teacher training). “This project specifically advertised for somebody who was used to working with children, and it sounded perfect for me. I thought oh, wow, you can do the nitty gritty of working with children and working with families, but there's also maybe an opportunity here for something that approaches it from a different angle, through a different lens.”
By demonstrating that research grounded in the communities in which universities are based, which pulls in the experience of people on the front lines of those communities, drives more powerful and tangible results, CoLab seeks to provide an exciting new template for the sector.
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