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News from the field….on interviewing

Posted on September 2nd, 2010 by Ellie Brodie in Project news
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As we get close to completing the in-depth interviews, it seems a good moment to share some of my experiences as the researcher responsible for the suburban case study (Enfield) on this key part of the research project.

The interviews are at the heart of the Pathways project as it is through these that we are gathering people’s rich and varied life stories of participation. When looking for people to interview, we have a number of things in mind: How heavily is the person involved in an activity (be it volunteering at a local theatre or taking part in a resident’s association)? Are we speaking to people from a range of activities and sites of participation, identified in the earlier fieldwork stage in the mapping workshops? Are we interviewing people from a range of different backgrounds, ages, ethnicities, and so on?

Getting this balance has proved tricky, partly because it is impossible to know the extent and variety of someone’s participation until you start speaking with them. Take, for example, a recent interview I had with a school governor who had also been volunteering for the local hospital radio for nearly 30 years – something I couldn’t have known without sitting down with him and asking him to reflect on all of his participation experience.

Regular meetings and updates between the researchers have helped us recruit a good mix of interviewees across the three fieldwork sites (Enfield, Leeds and Suffolk). These meetings have also really helped us maintain a sense of coherence across the fieldwork areas, to learn from each other’s experiences and share emerging ideas. We have agreed that asking people to draw a timeline of their history of participation history really helps to focus the interview and to make connections between different periods of someone’s life.

I have been surprised and touched by the time and effort that people have made to meet with me and tell me their story, and pleased that most participants have been positive about the experience. Some encounters have been very moving, as people share personal reasons for their participation (or why they have stopped participating, either now or in the past). The fascinating conversations I’ve been having with people are making me think not only about participation from the perspective of the Pathways research but also from a more personal level about my own participation and history of involvement – something I hadn’t banked on!

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Interview with Marilyn Taylor

Posted on August 26th, 2010 by Veronique Jochum in Project news
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Marilyn Taylor (MT), chair of our advisory group, talks to Véronique (VJ) about the project and how it might inform the Big Society agenda.

VJ: Why did you decide to get involved in this project?

MT: Having been involved in many different research projects on participation and governance, I still feel that we don’t understand enough about what participation means to people – why they get involved, why they continue or stop being involved.  Or indeed, its impact on the rest of their lives. So there’s a real need to dig a little deeper. The Pathways through Participation project appealed to me because I felt that was what it was trying to do.

VJ: How do you think the project might inform the Big Society agenda?

MT: It’s not yet clear to me what the Big Society agenda is exactly, but it seems to be based on the assumption that, given the chance, there is an army of people out there who are not involved in community activities at the moment but, if the conditions are right, will want to get involved and volunteer in their communities. And that this will provide what communities need. Before making that assumption we really need to know more about who is already involved, who isn’t, how people engage in different forms of activities, why, at what point in their lives, and what impact it has on them and those around them. All this affects what can be expected of them. We also need to know more about what people do and don’t want to get involved in. I hope the Pathways through Participation project will be able to provide evidence on this.  And that this will inform policy on how best to support community participation so that it works for everybody but does not ask too much of people.

Research suggests that, left to their own devices, it is middle class people who volunteer more and are more likely to want to take up opportunities to run services, challenge planning laws and so on. People from poorer areas have much less of a voice – they have a lot of pressures on them, don’t necessarily know how the system works – and public service cuts are likely to hit them and the support they need hardest, which will add to the pressures. So, if the Big Society is going to work for them, we need to know what they want, what it is realistic to expect and how they can have the same opportunities as other people. 

Another thing is that some of the traditional ways of participating locally are no longer there. Political parties and trade unions no longer have much of a local presence, for example, public spaces are being privatised, pubs and post offices are closing down.  What difference does this make?  And where are the new spaces where people connect with each other? Or is participation more of an individual affair? Of course there’s the internet, so can the project tell us more about how that plays into the picture of participation? Does it complement or replace face-to-face forms of participation, for example? And how does this differ between different population groups?

VJ: What would you like to see come out of the project?

MT: Above all, I’d like the project to provide a more realistic view of participation; what it means to people and how it affects them. Getting involved in your community can be very rewarding but also quite stressful and we need to understand the stresses and strains as well as the undoubted benefits.  I really hope the project can help policy-makers think through some of the complexities of participation, and reflect on what their role might be in promoting opportunities for participation that work for the whole community, and for different communities, not just for the few.

I’d also like to know how different forms of participation interact.  Is it the same people all the time? Or do different people choose different ways to engage?

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The Big Society and the Pathways through Participation project

Posted on August 12th, 2010 by Veronique Jochum in Project news
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There have now literally been thousands of articles/documents/posts on various aspects of this new government agenda. Without wanting to add yet another, we thought it might be useful to list the ones that have refered to this project in one way or another:

For additional and more general information on the Big Society, you may also want to visit NCVO’s dedicated Big Society webpage.

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Using participatory mapping to explore participation

Posted on June 28th, 2010 by admin in Project news
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The project team’s latest report is now available for download. ‘Using participatory mapping to explore participation in three communities’ illustrates the history of participatory mapping as a versatile research tool, demonstrating its potential use in a variety of scenarios. The report then explains our approach to mapping within the Pathways through Participation project, and discusses the emergent findings and our reflections on the method.

Click here to download the report.

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Interview with Richard Jackson

Posted on June 14th, 2010 by Veronique Jochum in Project news
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Richard Jackson (RJ) is member of our advisory group. He is the Chief Executive of Voluntary Action Leeds (VA-L) and chairs the Leeds Local Stakeholder Group. Here he responds to a few questions from Eddie (EC).

EC: Richard, could you tell us a bit about your interest in the project?

RJ: Well I’m interested in the project because I’m interested in the idea of participation. I think one of the key issues today, facing both statutory and voluntary organisations, is how do we participate in a meaningful way, with the public, in order to inform and develop our services.

EC: Excellent. And how do you feel the research can help Leeds and feed into other inner city areas such as Leeds?

RJ: There’s lots of participation going on,  but participation opportunities are designed by the agency to meet the agency’s needs and they’re often not structured in a way that best meets the needs of the people that you’re aiming to serve. I think that my ambition for the project, whether it’s able to achieve it with the resources or not, is to come up with some clear idea that Leeds can use about how we can engage people better in participation activities. I think the project so far has challenged that in Leeds; the local stakeholder group meetings, the mapping sessions that we’ve had, the outcomes we’ve had, people have shown a great deal of interest in them. The interim report is out, I’ve had a look at that, again, there’s a great deal of interest in it because it is challenging the norm, it’s challenging people’s perceptions of how we should or shouldn’t participate with groups. Nobody comes to a stakeholder meeting and goes away and says ‘that was a waste of time, I haven’t learnt anything’ because they always feel as though they’ve come away with something new, and that their work is going to change as a result of that engagement, and I think that’s only going to grow as the project moves forward.

EC: The next phase of the project will be the in-depth interviews. What are you hoping they will bring to the project?

RJ: It’s the bit that everybody’s interested in. It’s the bit that matters really. It’s talking to people about how they participate. It’s actually trying to find people who participate, as well as those who don’t participate very often and finding out why they don’t participate. I am deeply interested, as are all the other members of the local stakeholder group, and people outside that, to find out why people do or don’t participate and what the connections and patterns are. If we find the answers to these questions we’re on to a winner! Maybe I’m expecting too much from the project, but anything that gives us a clear indication, because we are falling back on the same methods again and again and again, using the same old techniques, and providing people with an opportunity to participate, but not necessarily an opportunity that fits their needs and their wants. What we’ve got now, on behalf of Leeds, is somebody coming in from outside, having done a significant amount of preparation, with the literature review and everything else, and asking the question that Leeds needs to ask, but in a very objective way, without any local politic or local relationship affecting that and that’s really, really important. I think there’s no loss on that – I think if it even reinforces that what we are doing now is right, it will have helped us to move forward.

EC: Great stuff. Thank you very much Richard.

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The third issue of our newsletter is now available

Posted on May 14th, 2010 by Veronique Jochum in Project news
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It can be downloaded on the resources page. Enjoy!

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Interview with Jonathan Moore

Posted on May 13th, 2010 by Sarah Miller in Project news
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Jonathan Moore (JM) is the Chief Executive of the Suffolk Association of Voluntary Organisations and is involved with Pathways through Participation as the Chair of the Suffolk Local Stakeholder Group and a member of the Advisory Group. Sarah (SM) spoke with him about his views on how the project has been taking shape.

SM: What was it about the project that made you interested in being involved?

JM: One thing that drives me in my work in the voluntary sector is people getting up and doing something, changing their lives, trying to find solutions. Anything only changes if people actually take some ownership, participate in one form or another. So I’m very keen on finding ways of identifying what drives participation, what motivates people, and how one can get more of it.

SM: You’ve been involved in the Advisory Group. You’ve been involved in the Local Stakeholder Group. You’ve been quite instrumental in shaping the project. What are your reflections on these last 9-10 months?

JM: One thing that I really like seeing is the cross-organisational involvement of the Institute of Volunteering Research, Involve, and NCVO. I think that’s a good mark and that’s something I find attractive.

What I’ve experienced for the first time which I think is quite interesting is different methodologies of research. So there have been some reflections [within SAVO] on how we look at gathering information as an organisation and that’s been quite a key learning point.

I find the Advisory Group very stimulating. I’m not really a great researcher; I’m a bit more of a hands-on one, but I think it’s quite interesting to blend theory with practice and actually see what the practical applications of this learning are…One thing that I think is quite encouraging about this project is involves local councillors and part of the reflection is feeding back into other arenas. So I’m rather hopeful that some of the information that can be found in Suffolk can actually help shape some of the thinking within Suffolk.

SM: Why is it important to you that Suffolk is represented, or maybe more broadly that the rural experience is represented in this project?

JM: There are some really great similarities between areas that bear no relationship to one another, whether it’s an urban or metropolitan or rural area. But the other thing that comes across is that there are also some very distinct differences and something that comes across [in the research on Suffolk] is sparcity and access to opportunities to participate. Gaining the kind of critical mass that you need to actually be able to run an organisation is harder when you have a very dispersed client base or volunteer base. Therefore things like transport become critical parts of the success factor in a way that they aren’t in other areas. Those are things that need to be in the thinking when we’re developing policy or models of good practice.

SM: How might this project feed into SAVO’s work or to your work in local areas?

JM: In all the partnerships that we work with both within the voluntary sector, within the statutory sector, and in various others, there is a recognition that finding ways of involving and engaging people is a critical part of improving and creating quality services. And yet I think it’s a fairly clumsy way that people are doing it. The kind of approach you’re often seeing is a gathering of usual suspects so that new forms of empowerment are not happening. Or there’s almost extremes where you get those that are perhaps most vociferous or in conflict. So I’d be very interested in feeding up the [project] findings.

If we can understand what makes people participate and what encourages participation then what we can do is feed this into the culture of how not only voluntary but also statutory groups begin to try to communicate and work with the communities they’re there to serve. It’s quite vibrant in Suffolk. We’ve had a lot of discussions in Suffolk about local government review and community boards and there’s a lot of change going on in relation to that so this has a good opportunity to help inform and shape that agenda.

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Literature review: 2 more summaries available

Posted on May 12th, 2010 by Veronique Jochum in Project news
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We have produced 2 more summaries for our literature review Understanding participation. These are:

Both are also available in our resources section, where you can also download our first 2 briefing papers:

  • Briefing paper 1: What is participation? Towards a round-earth view of participation
  • Briefing paper 2: What are the drivers of participation? Participation in context
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Progress report – Situated practice: Initial reflections on the organisation of participation

Posted on May 10th, 2010 by Veronique Jochum in Project news
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We have just completed our first progress report, which describes some of the observations and reflections emerging out of the initial stages of the project, focusing on how participation is organised and the roles and understandings of the institutions and facilitators of participation within our three local case study areas.  The report is structured as follows and can be dowloaded here:

1. Introduction
2. Grounding our thinking: an emerging framework of participation
3. Participation in context: the policy environment
4. Participation in context: the case study areas
5. How is participation organised?
6. Exploring understandings of participation
7. Emerging questions for next stages of the research
8. Next steps 

 

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