Community Voice: Entering the World of Community Research - Meet Marcus

Marcus Tayebwa is a member of our Community Research team, working on a number of research projects across London. In the first of a series of blogs introducing the Community Researchers, we meet Marcus and learn more about his upbringing, motivations and convictions when it comes to digital transformation, socio-economic trends, community research, creating equity and more. 

I am someone who has discovered Community Research after a lifetime of seeking it without knowing exactly what it was and where to find it! I grew up in a Ugandan household in Wanstead, East London where I soaked up a busy and communicative atmosphere thanks to the Ugandan immigrant community I was socialised into. At age 14, due to turbulent circumstances, I found myself living with my Uncle Gilbert who went on to instil the sense of civic accountability in me that is at the very foundation of the work that I do today. He held me accountable for my actions and blessed my life with wisdom, direction, support and understanding that I sorely needed. His socially aware outlook on life grounded me with the importance of contributing to the future of my community socio-economically. 

I learned the value of evaluating both the past and the present in my search for self-realisation. My unconventional upbringing taught me how to think outside the box and beyond the limitations that society puts on a young black man from humble origins. I decided that my core philosophy would be in the act of turning one’s pain into mastery. My own life is deeply reflective of my creed. Through self-education and a healthy dose of scepticism on worldly affairs, I learned to accurately recognise the distinction between the idealistic society I was taught to expect in high school and the reality of the world I now live in.

Challenging the traditional expectations of society

As I have grown up I discovered that many social systems are way past their 'sell-by date' whether it's in the way they think or operate. In today’s information era, the world is rapidly changing and people like me tend to both see and set the trends before they happen because we’ve constantly got our eyes to the future. In society today, gone are the days of mass employment security and innovation is more important than ever in the face of an increasingly more automated economy. This is reflected in the human-centric changes visible in organisational culture today.

Throughout University and as an adult I learnt quickly that the traditional route of career progression and success wouldn’t be entirely reflective of my talents. I was dissatisfied with the education system despite having an academic mind. My humanitarian and ethical leanings made a lot of careers unattractive to me even though I may have been well suited to them.

Despite this quandary, I have managed to build a network of likeminded people who, not only share my views but also are able to develop enterprising solutions to fill the gap in the market for enterprising cultural equity within the economy.  I discovered a creative entrepreneurism rooted in the authenticity and ingenuity that both my generation and my community has been rallying for in this internet age. If you don’t believe me you could easily turn on the news, or better yet log online, and see the social unrest for your own eyes. Cultural capital is the socio-economic future in my eyes and thankfully for me, Community Research is a profession that’s at the forefront of the shift.

Entering the world of community research

What brought me to Community Research I hear you ask? I’ve always had an investigative mind, leaving no nook or cranny untouched in the pursuit of insights – with a strong focus on humanitarian leanings. The issue for me has always been, that I also have a strong entrepreneurial spirit. I therefore often experienced a disconnect between my conflicting ambitions often leaving me indecisive about my career direction. I’m aware that a lot of traditional and respected career pathways are rapidly being complemented by alternative routes, driven by digital transformation. How do I know this? I have researched it (thanks to the internet of course) and also built up a network of people from more traditional backgrounds who are trying to navigate these emerging pathways to success. Those people with side-hustles and a civic-mindedness to boot.

Community Research for me was a serendipitous avenue I stumbled upon through a chance meeting with my highly decorated colleague Shaun Danquah. He saw me reading a book on Humanism whilst at work and we struck up a conversation on the ongoing evolution of the human-centric approach in the research space. I did not know that Community Research was a thing and I didn’t know it could be done in such a way that complimented the authenticity and upward mobility of the communities it seeks to understand. Authenticity and upward mobility within Community Research to me means a co-designing and co-ownership of any research project done within a community, especially those with histories of hardship, misunderstanding and exploitation. 

Why is Community Research important to me in particular? Crucially it offers me a viable outlet for my passion and gift for identifying and analysing social-economic trends, whether current or future. In doing so I am able to exercise a certain empathy I have with my community and especially those on the fringes of society that I know from experience have a lot to offer but are misunderstood or unidentified. This provides is a way for me to influence the future, in a pioneering way, by taking a sensitive approach to healing the communication gaps in society.

Creating equity for all

As millennials, we have greater access to information than the generations before us. With all this information at our disposal, it's easier for people today to seek the truth and identify misinformation, fake news and lies. The prevalence of this kind of content has led to a huge lack of trust in authority and traditional institutions that reflect this authority. Community research has a part to play here. We are disrupting traditional ways of research in a way which I believe can help prevent the alienation often felt by younger generations.

I deeply feel there is a lot of pain in society that comes from the misinformation and lies. We really need to evaluate what's happening here so we can create solutions to address these issues. Community Research allows me to exercise my positionality within my community in the form of social brokerage that helps me bridge the generational gap in understanding. As it stands the new generation isn’t really interacted with adequately.

Teenagers and young adults are typically neglected to figure it out for themselves, especially those from a low-income background such as myself. According to Eurostat, in 2018 the rate of young people aged 16-29 years at risk of poverty and social exclusion in the EU was 26.3% or 20.6 million people. This definition of social exclusion took into account the at-risk-of-poverty rate, severe material deprivation and the share of households with very low work intensity rates.

Applying my personal lived experience to community research 

As someone with lived experience of relying on my own resourcefulness to overcome social deprivation, I’ve applied my own insights and techniques to researching the world of online entrepreneurship that has manifested itself as one of the millennial answers to upward mobility.  

As a young black entrepreneur, I understand that there are so many nuances explaining the ways the youth act the way they do. I have unique access to many creative entrepreneurs which means my community research uncovers valuable insights that traditional research models wouldn't have access to. This is especially important as the new entrepreneurial culture of the youth encourages an in-house business development that otherwise would go overlooked by traditional institutions that do not cater to them.

The unique selling point of Community Research in my eyes is the examination of the community in a way that allows community members to participate in and claim ownership of the research in a greater capacity than merely just as a case study object. Research extraction takes place when traditional institutions research a community without leaving behind any form of equity, ownership or legacy. 

Our engagement team of Community Researchers has the benefit of being both reflective of and in simpatico with the communities we are engaging. We have credible access to the 'hard to reach' combined with an approach to data evaluation which is at the same standard of academic rigour that traditional research is steeped in. This presents a unique opportunity to influence the evolution of society to the benefit of overlooked communities and their emerging needs.

By Marcus Tayebwa