Community Engagement

I first became involved in Community Engagement when I completed my PhD and took up a role as church based community worker on the east side of Manchester, at that time an ex-Irish slum. I learnt community organising from a Jesuit colleagues while visiting Chicago as part of my PhD, and have continued to follow the development of different understandings and approaches to community development and organisation.

Civic Mission has become something that Universities are taking increasingly seriously, although how this is understood varies considerably across institutions, and even between nations (the view from Wales is very different from that in England). Much of the work in this space, however, focuses on skills development and the role of the University in encouraging local economic growth and entrepreneurism.

My own focus remains on local communities, rather than local economies. Positive relations with the community surrounding the University is vital, but also a commitment to working with deprived neighbourhoods in the city or region in which the University is situated. It is here that I can bring advice and insight from the work that I have undertaken over the last thirty or so years.

I can offer expertise in the following areas:

The University and its Neighbours

All universities spend time and money maintaining good relations with those who live and work around their campuses or student halls of residences. Most universities also have volunteer programmes that offer the opportunities for students to offer back to the wider community in many different ways.

Further development of the local community, however, is something that some institutions do better than others. Holding community days on campus, offering other opportunities for local people to attend events and creating a porous boundary between the university and its neighbours is never a straightforward or easy task.

Managing the relationship with local community leaders, and ordinary residents, is often a specialist task and something that demands a strategic view from the university. I have skills in this area, as well as considerable experience in different kinds of community engagement, that would add value to any university’s thinking in this area.

Working with Deprived and Neglected Communities

There is a long history to extra-mural work within the university and while it is rarely possible to describe any of our higher education institutions as ‘ivory towers’ there are clearly some communities that the university seldom reaches.

In many urban areas (and not a few rural ones as well) we live in what Steven Vertovec has described as super-diversity. This suggests that there are communities within communities and even to work with community leaders and economic developers in a particular neighbourhood will mean that some communities are neglected.

My research and action in a number of very different communities in Birmingham throughout my time in the city mean that I have a deep understanding of how neighbourhoods function and how to reach some of the more neglected elements of the community. I bring both theoretical and practical experience in this field and would be happy to work with any group within a university to explore this further in their own context.

Practitioner Researchers

I have worked with practitioner researchers on a number of projects and have found schemes such as this to be an ideal way of working closely with particular communities.

Whether as part of growing relations with creative industries and institutions across the city, or through neighbourhood work in which colleagues from local authorities, community workers, healthcare workers and others become part of the research team, the combination of enthusiastic individual researchers, developing their own projects, and collective action through networking and team work, the role of practitioner researchers brings something very distinctive to community engagement.

If this is something that you, or your institution, wishes to develop then I would be very happy to bring my experience and help to establish a local scheme.

Civic Mission Strategies

Most universities have, or are developing a civic mission strategy. Many of these have now been in place long enough to benefit from evaluation and review.

My own focus will always be on the impact that these strategies have on the most deprived neighbourhoods and communities, and that necessitates engaging with individuals from these communities and reflecting together on the wider impact of the strategy.

My training in anthropology, ethnographic methods, community organising and my experience of working with many different communities, places me in a very strong position to lead, or collaborate, in the review of civic mission and community engagement strategies.