Creating Living Knowledge: The Connected Communities Programme, community-university partnerships and the participatory turn in the production of knowledge

This report provides an overview of lessons learned about university-community collaborations in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences. It describes the work of the RCUK/AHRC Connected Communities Programme, a £30m investment in over 300 projects since 2010. It examines the contexts for community-university partnerships, motivations for participation, the different genres and traditions of this work, the implications of different funding models and the legacies of the projects. It asks whether the shift toward collaborative partnerships is enhancing the quality of research and/or democratising research. The report argues that the infrastructure for collaborative research requires greater investment - including recognising the need to invest in time - for academics and community partners to develop collaborations outside the project-funding model. It also argues that there is a risk that the shift toward collaborative research may intensify inequalities in the research landscape without explicit and clearly defined steps to mitigate this. Finally, the report argues that the development of collaborative research needs to be understood in the wider context of university-society relations - in particular, the need to consider how such research relates to widening participation and to teaching.