6 March 2024
Since its establishment in February 2024, the Centre for Applied Research in Empowering Society (CARES) has held several co-production workshops with its members. Led by CARES co-director and the lead of members’ engagement, Dr Torange Khonsari, these workshops have been instrumental in shaping the Centre's activities for the coming year, as well as the Centre’s priorities.
The first workshop, conducted on 6 March 2024, focused on identifying key research themes such as community engagement, social innovation, and participatory methodologies. This session resulted in the formation of working groups dedicated to these themes and the creation of interdisciplinary collaboration frameworks. Building on this, the second workshop on 10 April 2024, finalised the Centre’s one-year program, detailing project plans, resource allocation, and key milestones.
Empowering Research
The collaborative efforts during these co-production workshops have resulted in a robust and ambitious one-year program for CARES. The workshops shaped three dimensions of the centres work for the future, namely: Share and Collaborate, Execute, and Impact.
Emphasising the Share and Collaborate commitment, the Centre established the Show and Tell strand of activities led by Dr Torange Khonsari and monthly meetups for early career researchers.
Part of the commitment to Execute, CARES provided funding support for five projects teams to develop Participatory Research Toolkits based on the methodologies used in their research:
- Sian Moxon and Justin Webb are developing a toolkit for policy makers around re-wilding in London
- Hilda Mulrooney and Dee Bhakta are developing a toolkit stemming out of their community food projects
- Julius Elster and Ama Agyeman are developing two participatory toolkits around involving young people (under 16 and over 16) in social action
- Jane Lewis and Josefine Nyby are developing a participatory toolkit around engaging disabled communities in re-search and co-production
Finally, as a result of the Impact commitment, the Centre held its first Applied Research Conference on 12 June, with plans for future impact sessions and mentoring.
.png)