We work in a variety of public and third sector organisations, networks and communities where social outcomes and social responsibility matter.
Our action research approach offers a structure and facilitative process to support on-going learning throughout a change programme. These recent examples focus on supporting system change and early action using action research. The archive has more examples that encompass leadership development, caring conversations, appreciative action research and assets-focused work, as well as service evaluations and support for story sharing.
We expect to write and share more about our experience of action research, so if any of this material is of interest, please do share your comments.
What Matters to You (WM2U) (2018-2024)
WM2U is a community-based, voice-led systems change initiative working alongside families in two communities in Dundee and East Ayrshire. It focuses on shifting public resources to offer support earlier, thereby enabling children to flourish within their own families. Funded by BBC Children in Need and the Hunter Foundation.
Many policies propose ‘system change’, co-production or voice-led change, but it is not
always clear what this really means or how to go about it. The experience of WM2U sheds light on what it might mean to unpick the ‘implementation gap’ between high-level policy ideals and changing practices on the ground.
Research for Real was part of a Learning Partner consortium with Animate and Symmetric Scenarios. The ambition of ‘system change’ demands that we think differently about how we define and measure success. The need to engage with a wide range of people, take time and emphasise continuous learning and adaption has had to contend with systemic taken-for-granted mindsets and reporting practices that favour a quick pace, more familiar metrics and simplistic silver-bullet short term solutions. Our ‘Grow as We Go’ approach evolved as an intentional and systemic approach to collaborative and experiential learning. The learning influenced the immediate work, explored where to look for signs of system change and generated insights about investment in early help and prevention.
A series of four evaluation reports are now available, together with a digest “Becoming Allies in Change” Each of these reports are designed to be read as standalone reports. We suggest interested readers should start with the digest to get a sense of the developing system change methodology, an overview of outcomes achieved to date, and learning about early help and prevention. Then dip into whatever especially interests you.
REPORT 1 – PURPOSE Our ambition and key elements of our approach: this paper contains an overview of the key and common elements of WM2U that relate to both areas, East Ayrshire and Dundee and will help readers to understand the evolution of the ambition and practices of WM2U, the approach to learning and the overall evidence base.
REPORT 2 – EAST AYRSHIRE This report focuses on the development of WM2U in East
Ayrshire and offers an account of the expansion of community-led support and the
subsequent formation of the Nest Wellbeing Group (NWBG), now at the forefront of
developing a range of health, wellbeing and social activities in Cumnock. Whilst WM2U funding concluded in East Ayrshire in October 2024, the far from unique challenges and insights are likely to be important for others to understand.
REPORT 3 – DUNDEE This report focuses on the development of WM2U in Dundee over the past five years. Here opportunities are beginning to emerge for long-term system change and funding for this work will continue to 2026, with Animate as the learning partner.
REPORT 4 – MEASURES THAT MATTER This report is dedicated to the fuller exploration of learning in relation to the conceptual and empirical elements of the measurement of change. It demonstrates our evolution in thinking about how to evaluate impact and brings further benefits of introducing local authorities to new ways of looking at data, working with stories and understanding change.
Early Action System Change – Learning Support for the National Lottery Community Fund Partnerships in Scotland (2018-2023)
This set of six briefings provide insight into the importance and challenges of foregrounding learning in systems change work. They draw on varied learning support, provided with Animate, including action learning sets, regular huddles, events and webinars. Our aim was to foster a culture of collaborative learning with the eight partnerships, so that information sharing, innovation and problem solving could take place in a supportive safe environment.
- Learning in New Territories, Thematic Briefing No 1
- From Consultation to Conversation, Thematic Briefing No 2
- Learning As We Go: Early Action System Change Thematic Briefing No 3
- Exploring Our Thinking About Generating and Using Evidence in System Change Thematic Briefing No 4
- Finding Our Way Through Complexity Thematic Briefing No 5
- Is it ever too late to think about sustainability? Thematic briefing No 6
Collective Leadership for Scotland (CLfS) (2018-2022)
The work of CLfS has now been archived. These two reports are available on their archived website here and below.
Collective Leadership: How do we know we are doing good work? (2022) The learning in this report draws on a wide range of evidence from across CLfS programmes between August 2020–July 2022. It deepens understanding of some of the challenges of commissioning, convening, and the scope for deeper impact through building reflective and relational leadership practices. It also outlines social and experiential sensemaking and facilitation practices to strengthen the action inquiry approach as a deliberate learning strategy, building cultures that support new forms of collaborative inquiry and systemic action research.
Collective Leadership: Where Nothing is Clear and Everything Keeps Changing, Exploring new territories for evaluation (2018) Drawing on action research, this research paper recasts evaluation as ‘action inquiry’, an embedded evaluative learning practice that can help navigate complexity when enacting collective leadership. Action inquiry can be helpful anywhere where success depends on the quality of relationships that can be developed. This paper is also available here.
Here’s a recent short video from One Thing At A Time Reading Circle session, May 2020