7 February was the first Future Histories workshop of 2015. The day began with all the groups giving a presentation to the other groups reporting on our plans for the exhibition and our progress to date. As Tazeem was unable to be present, Jen and myself were entrusted with representing the My Community UK […]

  Over the weekend of 22 and 23 November we attended the second weekend workshop for the Future Histories programme. Under the heading ‘Consult’ we had a number of interesting presentations from academics and community partners about the benefits and pitfalls of working together. As in previous sessions, the necessity of collaboration was promoted as […]

  Tuesday 28 October fell into the schools autumn half term holiday week. Tazeem and the My Community UK team had organised a joint activity at Burnage Community Centre to bring the members of the Young Roots Group together with the women’s group.   Led by Jana who has already been working on an arts […]

After some great sessions in our workshops looking at how to approach working with communities through effective public engagement, it was time for me to leave the ivory tower.   On Saturday 18th October I made a flying visit to Manchester to meet some of the young people working on the My Community UK young […]

We attended Workshop One over the weekend of 27th and 28th September 2014 which focused on engaging and connecting. The first session looked at the importance of public engagement and understanding the needs of people. We learnt about public engagement qualities and how it can be broken down into a few key areas: purpose, people, […]

Saturday 6 September, 2014 After several months of the recruitment process, being assigned to our research groups and the launch of the website, the orientation day on 6 September was the first time everyone would meet to start the Creating our Futures Histories programme. All the workshops will take place at the People’s History Museum. […]

Public engagement and external partnership building have become an important factor in the career progression of up-and-coming academics; it is now a standard requirement for all researchers to account for the relevance and impact of their research.

All of us are advised to incorporate public engagement and partnership building into the research process from the very conception of a new project; rather than simply integral to the research, public engagement must be constitutive of it, determining its genesis rather than merely accompanying its dissemination.

This new ‘ideal’ research scenario not only raises questions regarding the appropriation of traditional research procedures, but also exposes a huge skills gap concerning effective methodological innovation. Our proposed training aims to fill this gap by equipping PGR/ECRs with ‘hands-on’ research partnership experience regarding the collaborative excavation, representation and recording of our community-based local histories.

My Community UK 680 Burnage Lane, Manchester, M19 1NA