AHRC Starting From Values

HARDER, M.K. (2021) AHRC Starting From Values. [Data Collection]

Project Description

This project is concerned with the legacy of AHRC funded Connected Communities projects. In this project, we will work together in eight diverse and overlapping AHRC Connected Communities - academic networks, civil society organizations, online communities, and groups rooted in physical neighbourhoods - to co-develop creative ways of identifying, evaluating and enhancing intangible, values-related aspects of project legacies. The question of legacy is closely connected to the values of different stakeholders, yet these values are rarely discussed openly, and many are not considered measurable in tangible ways. As a result, traditional evaluations tend to reflect the values of donors or governments, and what can be easily measured, rather than considering what project partners may be striving to achieve. This project is innovative in bringing out unheard voices and legacies and giving them authority, by bringing together three emerging strands of interdisciplinary research. One is the co-development of creative and arts-based research methodologies which can enable different knowledges and 'ways of knowing' to be understood (e.g. visual, theatrical). Another is the use of a values lens for the local elicitation of appropriate indicators, frameworks or entire evaluation systems that allow locally important, 'intangible' outcomes to be clarified and effectively communicated. The third is an exploration of new forms of authority that are not derived from static laws or structures, but from sources of creativity. A careful, critical and reflective synthesis of these three strands will enable us to co-map less tangible legacies and pathways of influence for CC projects, making them 'quasi-objective' rather than subjective, and granting them legitimacy and authority in wider political and policy arenas. In so doing, we will be developing an approach that may provide the same, much needed, service in several other arenas such as sustainability, civil society and values based management. The research will use a structure of five collaborative events, building an iterative and reflective cycle into the research process. We are a consortium of academic and community partners with extensive combined experience in co-design, critical approaches to participatory research, and innovative research methodologies. We will develop locally relevant and rigorous evaluation approaches to explore, crystallise and articulate self-defined 'intangible legacies' through workshops for some, and a retreat for others. We will draw on different arts and humanities scholarship, exploring, for instance, the importance of material expressions of authority, and the transformative and informative role of co-created visual arts. In such ways, we will build up shared understandings of what is important to us, and in the process making it more locally measurable. This will enhance our ability to communicate our deeply-held priorities, focus future work effectively, build on the legacy of recent projects, and influence wider arenas of policy and practice. Our approach will contribute to enhancing CC legacies rather than merely documenting them, in that increased awareness of the identified valued legacies will cause them to be supported further. It will also support the creation of new networks and enable and empower participants in these projects to themselves become co-designers of values-based evaluation systems. Our community co-investigators will lead on developing and embedding similar evaluative approaches in at least six other Connected Communities projects, both in order to test the generalizability of the new approaches, and to facilitate project partners to become (vernacular) designers of values-focused evaluation systems. We will share our findings with the wider Connected Communities programme and achieve wide dissemination through information packs, multimedia production and a public showcase event.