Community Voice: Paul and Daniel on community research models
Paul Addae and Daniel Morris are two of the Community Researchers with whom TSIP collaborates on a regular basis. ‘Community researchers’ are skilled professionals with existing connections in the communities where they work. These networks and the authenticity with which they are navigated are increasingly being recognised as enormously important to the social research sector, which sometimes struggles with outreach and building trust. At TSIP, we’ve been helping drive this shift towards Community Researchers, bringing them into our team for our current and future projects such as the Gehl foodscapes research, Thamesmead community impact evaluation, and others.
This shift in ways of thinking and working is something we are passionate about, but also something we are continually learning from. Any meaningful change is going to be a journey that comes with setbacks and surprises, and we wanted to make sure that we not only stop to take stock with our Community Researchers but also that we pass on our learnings to anyone looking to build similar partnerships.
We sat down with Paul and Daniel to hear their thoughts on community research methods, why research that’s led by the community is vital and how they envision this kind of research model growing over time.
*The below is an edited transcript of an interview that took place between Paul Addae, Daniel Morris, Shaun Danquah and Tyler Fox on 12 December 2019.
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Tell us a little about yourselves, how you’re connected to South London and how you got involved with working with us on community researchers
Daniel: My connection to South London: first of all, I was born here! Born and bred, as they say. My connection in a professional capacity is I began youth work in South London – Brixton Hill to be specific – in the Clapham Park area. I was working alongside the new NDC, which was New Deals for Communities at the time; Clapham Park Project. I was working with them in an outreach capacity, so I was going around doing outreach with some of the young people that lived in the area. [NDC] needed somebody to go out that was familiar with the young people to interact with them and kind of get their feedback and their insight into how they needed to remodel the area and such, and what provisions and resources that they needed for, in particular, social mobility, because that is really the driving bus for success in their eyes. After that, I worked in education and I’m still doing outreach [at Centrepoint]. I eventually set up my own company.
Paul: I’m afraid I’m not born and bred South London! I was born in Oxford, which had its own issues growing up there, and then I came to London in 1997 to start university, but before that I was coming to South London; I had cousins and relatives who lived in South London. So, during completing my studies in university, I was also sort of in the community, South London in particular. So, I completed my BA and MA at SOAS – I did history, mainly with a focus on African history, then I did African studies, looked at the history of Islam in Africa. In 2003, I lived in Saudi for about a year. I was working as a curriculum author on some textbooks that were published in the English language. So, I did that for a year, came back to the UK, and then 2005 we then initiated a prison-based project which was a kind of a diversionary programme to help the vulnerable young Muslim guys who were in prison. So that came to an end, and then I worked with the Lakahi Foundation as a Senior Researcher; they’re a social impact charity, and they had some funding to do some research into effective de-radicalisation programmes in Europe. And I’m currently working as a Senior Support Worker for Look Ahead in Kensington and Chelsea.
Thanks for sharing! So why do you think community research carried out by local researchers is important?
Daniel: Generally, research is for the pursuit of qualitative information, and that information is to be used on the basis that we’re gathering information to cause change on a particular subject matter within that community. So, for me, I believe it’s important because if you don’t know what the community’s true, identified issues are, how can you put things in place to solve them? Now, I’ve always looked at it from the point of view that the community can solve its own issues if they have the necessary tools and resources to do so.
Paul: It's been something which has been underdone, really, under-developed, under-utilised within the research literature as well. It's been discussed by some researchers as being a problem, a hindrance, to some of their studies, that they haven't been able to access [communities], due to them not having adequate…social currency, which is an important term. And also like a credibility: they've been unable to tap into key research in various communities. I think that's obviously where we would come in; we can assist in that for a research project. So that alone is important: to hear the narratives of people who are in these communities, but particularly, communities which maybe they feel that…their voices have kind of been blurred out, so we're not hearing their narratives as much.
Do you see how community research could become problematic? I mean, for instance, issues such as bias, insider approaches sometimes affecting the research, and so forth?
Paul: Yeah, that can be a problem, definitely. That's a disadvantage. But there has to be something put in place, in the research itself, to mitigate against that. Safety's an issue, bias is an issue, but I think what you probably need to do is set up a kind of preliminary ethics – your own kind of mini-ethics board; I think that would only further the research. Bias could be an issue, and there's also an issue which comes up which is this whole notion of, like you mentioned, insider research…but I would err on the side of that there are more strengths in that approach than weaknesses. Because most of the [current] research isn't done with that in mind; most of that research is done at a distance, a complete disconnect with who you're trying to research.
Just elaborate a little bit, what do you mean by that: huge disconnection?
Paul: So, there's issues of distrust, there's issues of what are these researchers going to bring back to us? What's the feedback for us? You've got these people coming in asking all these questions, and then what? They just come and go; they're just looking for a juicy scoop. So that's [the community’s] big problem: what's in it for us? What's the buy-in for us? Because otherwise it's seen as what's going to be the results of this [research]? There doesn't necessarily have to be tangible outcomes for this research, but some researchers are seen as if they're just coming in, whereas a strength with the approach which I think you're trying to foster now is that we do have some kind of community equity, in that we've actually done some stuff in the community to show for it. We haven't just whizzed in, whizzed out, and left people wondering.
Daniel: It's about the intention. What is the intention of going there, because you have to communicate that and have the community comprehend what your intention is. We're fortunate enough to have that equity, so we can come in and they can say, okay, these guys seem as if they're going to come in and they're going to do some work, which the intention is for them to help us. We're going to benefit from this. So, if they ask us questions, we're going to give our answer based on the fact that we believe something's going to come back.
Paul: Now, I'd say the Gehl project was a case in point. I think that was really original, the approach which Sophia [Schuff] and her team had. Because [public health is] a major issue. I'm unaware of anything taking place like that. And there was a lot of good feedback.
Do you think there is a need to kind of make sure you’re capacity building communities to kind of do this research for themselves, or do you think that's not really relevant?
Paul: If people are interested in that, but I think it's enough to try to get potential research participants who can buy into the research, and I think that's sufficient as long as they're on board with the research; that in itself is a massive step. If people do want to, you know, become more hands-on in terms of the research, yeah, they need to be trained up for that.
Daniel: When I look at like peer-to-peer research now, it's obviously something that many different groups and charities adopt at the moment. Because…basically they've got the peers to affect the peers. I've worked with TRAs [Tenant Resident Associations] for instance. And what [local authorities and other organisations] do is, they use [TRAs] again for research. So, if I need to do consultation, I go to the TRA and I do a consultation, and I ask them want do your community want? [The TRA doesn’t] know because they haven't done research, and that's what my point is. They haven't done it. So, I think they need to be upskilled to be able to do that. Because they don't, so how can these housing organisations and corporations and local authorities come in and ask that of them, you know?
So, I imagine you have some hopes and dreams about how this kind of research might turn out, and what that might lead to. What are they?
Paul: As I said, I think there's huge scope for this kind of model. So, I would hope that it's something which is looked at in other areas, in other parts of the country. But I think in London itself there is huge scope in different areas.
Daniel: New innovations, really. I think, yeah, it's innovative ways of conducting research, of feeding back research. If there is a way in which the information can provide or the information that is provided can lend support to upskill. You can only create equality, you can only create opportunity in that sphere if everybody has those tools or resources, those skill sets to be able to work within that sphere. And so, for me, yeah, definitely it's about new innovations, new ideas, new thinking to challenge the narrative.
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“If you don’t know what the community’s true, identified issues are, how can you put things in place to solve them?”
“So that’s [the community’s] big problem: what’s in it for us? What’s the buy-in for us?”
“We do have some kind of community equity, in that we’ve actually done some stuff in the community to show for it.”
“You can only create opportunity in that sphere if everybody has those tools or resources”
To find out more about our work with Community Researchers, get in touch with Shaun Danquah on shaun.danquah@tsip.co.uk or Tyler Fox on tyler.fox@tsip.co.uk.