Friday, July 30, 2010

Academic and student researchers at Goldsmiths College working with community organisations in Hackney


Hackney Unites is working to link academic and student researchers at Goldsmiths College with community organisations in Hackney.

The aim is to link community groups with researchers who can assist them in preparing an evidenced based argument for their particular concerns. We also hope to be able to bring all these small projects together to build an evidence bank for campaigners in Hackney and hopefully have an event where the research can be presented publicly.

Please see details from Anna Carlile, Lecturer in Inclusive Education at Goldsmith’s below and contact her to express your interest.

Research collaboration: Goldsmiths, University of London and Hackney Unites
The four ways in which collaboration would work would be:

A. An intern for your organisation: I place PGCE students (student teachers) with organisations one day a week. These are called 'enrichment placements', and are are intended to provide organisations with support to design resources, carry out projects, and support people, at the same time helping new teachers to become aware of and empathic about some of the issues they may come across in their classrooms. If your organisation would like to carry out a bit of research, a focus group project, or an arts-based investigation, this might be a good route. Placements do not necessarily need to be with young people or in education settings.

B. Collaborate with a school to carry out your research: The Illuminate Young Researchers Project trains young people in school in research methods. The young researchers then carry out their own research projects in school, at home and in the community. This may be a way to reach out to people not currently involved with your organisation, and will support young people to develop self advocacy skills, to make a reasoned argument, and to help their school become an active member of the local community. This might be a way to develop a collaboration between your organisation and a school, and to work with young people to carry out research into a particular concern. Recent Illuminate projects have covered safety on the bus route to school, lighting in quiet and secluded areas, racist bullying at school, and the role of the police in keeping school children safe on their route to school.

C. BA student research projects: I teach a course called 'Studies in Inclusion and Exclusion' on the BA Education Culture and Society at Goldsmiths. Their assignment is to carry out a case study of a person or organisation in terms of their experiences of and work relating to issues of inclusion and exclusion. I would like to invite four organisations to Goldsmiths to offer a research brief to these students, who would then carry out a piece of research and produce a research report for your organisation. The dates for these sessions are 20th January and 3rd February from 1pm-3pm, here at Goldsmiths. Please let me know if you are interested.

D. Research training and planning sessions for organisations: Illuminate researcher training can also be made available to adults in your organisation. I was thinking of starting this with the Workers Group, with other Hackney Unites people welcome to join. The training could take two half days and would help you to plan and carry out your own research project.

Please feel free to email me if any of the above ideas would work in terms of what your organisation is hoping to achieve within the Hackney Unites framework.

Best wishes
Anna

Anna Carlile, Lecturer in Inclusive Education
Head of Secondary Partnerships/MQA and Coordinator for CPD
Department of Educational Studies
Goldsmiths, University of London
e: a.carlile@gold.ac.uk

Thursday, July 29, 2010

Give your views on Hackney to the listening project


Dear All,

My name is Jaya Carrier and along with my colleague Jim Barlow, I am working at St. John-at-Hackney this month on a placement with London Citizens and TELCO, both of which use community organising in order to enact political change in local areas.

Our project involves creating a listening group to find out about life in Hackney, what some of the problems are, and how we might best respond to them. This is so that the coming works of London Citizens in Hackney might be better informed and so that we can begin to forge good relationships with different people and groups in Hackney. Our listening project involves conducting informal one-to-one conversations with people. They can be organised at the best convenience of people (be it in their homes, or anywhere else) and are no longer than 45 minutes. It would be wonderful to have as many people take part as possible, so please do get in touch if this is something you are interested in.


Should you have any questions please don't hesitate to ask either by email (jaya_carrier@hotmail.com) or by calling me on 07709495578.

Thank you!