Evaluation of Peabody's Placemaking Work in Thamesmead
The Peabody Group is responsible for 71,800 homes in London and the South East. We have 17,500 care and support customers.
Founded in 1946 by Ove Arup, Arup is a global firm of engineering consultants, designers, development planners and project managers.
Team:
Joseph Griffiths
Thelma Obirai
Sanaa Khan
Bukola Joel
Further Reading:
At the start of 2019, Arup and The Social Innovation Partnership embarked on a five-year evaluation of Peabody's work in Thamesmead.
Over the past two years, we have gathered and analysed various data sets in order to measure the impact Peabody’s placemaking project has had on local life, including residents' experience of living in the area, Thamesmead's landscape, its culture and arts offering, community involvement and cohesion and regeneration activities more broadly.
We have spoken to local residents, businesses and community organisations, as well as collected data from various local and national sources, with the aim of understanding how Thamesmead is changing, what Peabody is doing well and can be improved over the next four years.
As part of our work, we are motivated to ensure that the voices and experiences of community members and service users are heard, as they are an integral part of conducting balanced research, measuring impact and designing interventions. We want to ensure that more people who are living in a place, and who are experiencing the challenges that institutions are trying to “solve” in that place, are more involved in, and have greater ownership of, both local research and the social projects that come out of that research.
To that end, a Community Research Team has been established in Thamesmead, as part of TSIP’s wider Community Researcher programme. This team was recruited from across the Thamesmead community, trained in research methods and encouraged to bring their own individual expertise to the table. They have since designed and delivered focus groups and interviews, conducted analysis, written recommendations and inputted into various strategic meetings across Thamesmead.
The Community Research Team spent Autumn 2020 gathering data from local people about their experiences in Thamesmead over the last year. The Team:
Hosted 9 focus groups with over 100 attendees
Conducted 1:1 interviews with nearly 40 residents
Conducted 1:1 interviews with 14 local organisations
We have used this and other data to formulate recommendations for each of the areas Peabody is working to improve.