Community-based organisations play a vital role in raising awareness and taking action to address some of the most challenging issues faced by people across the world today. They do this by knowing these issues first-hand and through experiencing directly the consequences of policy action (and inaction), resourcing levels and social change. However, the experience of many community organisations is that they have very little time to spend reflecting on and sharing what they know, and few established channels through which such information can be shared.

The Community Research and Evaluation Gateway project (funded by Cupp ‘On our Doorsteps’) brought together 3 community organisations collectively known as the ‘East Brighton Gateway Partnership’ (EBGP) and two University of Brighton researchers. We aimed to develop awareness of the understanding that community organisations have of their members and localities and the potential significance of the information they hold for, for example, service planning, commissioning and delivery. To do this we worked collaboratively to share and understand ways in which the EBGP worked with data and information, in terms of:

• meeting formal requests for information and applying for funds
• using information to reflect on and support the development of the support the partnership provides
• seeking out new approaches to involving and engaging community members and those who might become community members
• reflecting the value of the partnership to a broader community of stakeholders such as local universities, health and social care services and the local authority

We organised a series of ‘action learning’ workshops that allowed us to share skills relevant to collecting and presenting data and to think about the significance of the data collected. For example, we were able to take data the partnership had collected on health and wellbeing to understand how engagement in adult learning created a ‘ripple’ effect, whereby learners frequently experienced positive incentives to make changes in a number of different areas of their lives, rather than just one. This suggests that instead of evaluating adult learning in terms of specific individual targets relevant to specific funders, there is also value to looking closely at how a series of opportunities and new connections can combine and develop to produce positive change in people’s lives.

In our view, there are clear advantages to building the capacity of community organisations and universities to work together in order to support recognition of, and collectively shape action to address, the pressing social challenges of our times. In addition, our project left us with a number of questions to consider which were:

• how can spaces to understand community concerns be created that are relevant to, but which also look beyond, the constraints of immediate ‘funder –funding recipient’ relationships?
• how can more people become involved in deciding how data relevant to their needs is used and represented?
• who ‘owns’ and has the right to access the information that community organisations collect?
• can community organisations be supported (rather than directed) by institutional partners to develop collectively meaningful and mutually beneficial approaches to evaluation and information sharing?
• what are the research and evaluation skills and resources that community organisations need (and don’t need)?

The Community Research and Evaluation Gateway is currently looking for ways to extend its work and address these challenging questions. Contact Carl Walker (c.j.walker@brighton.ac.uk) or Mary Darking (m.l.darking@brighton.ac.uk) for more information