‘When you work in the community you see the strengths, you see passions and resilience…’

The theme of this year's European Congress of Psychology, to be hosted by the British Psychological Society in Brighton this July, is 'Uniting communities for a sustainable world'. Ella Rhodes spoke to Dr Helen Johnson, Principal Lecturer in Psychology and Co-Director of the Centre for Arts and Wellbeing at the University of Brighton, and Nicole Monney, Co-Production Manager at the Trust for Developing Communities and also the former CEO of the Hangleton and Knoll Project, about the power of working on research alongside communities.

For more than 25 years, Nicole Monney has worked with communities in youth and community development work, and she has also collaborated with academics on community research projects. She tells me she is starkly aware of the impact of the cost of living crisis in communities right now. 'Services are on their knees and there just isn't access for a lot of people. We need to think differently – we've got whole communities experiencing collective trauma and hardship, with under-funded public services unable to respond.'

Monney emphasises how this impacts some communities across Brighton more than others, affecting people's access to education, affordable and healthy food, suitable transport and more. 'Some parts of psychology, such as behaviour change, put a lot of responsibility on the person – it suggests that everything can be controlled by the individual, but that's just not the case. What we have seen, though, is the power of the community when ideas and energies are harnessed: people volunteering their time to provide social spaces, food banks, emotional support, the power of collective action.'

The University of Brighton Community University Partnership Project (CUPP) Ignite Fund was developed to support the development of university partnerships with community groups. Helen Johnson explains that while there is funding available for research on communities, there is little in the way of funding to help develop and sustain partnerships with academics and community groups. 

'There's real investment required for this kind of research… investment in building up relationships, maintaining those relationships, and the development of impact and longevity in terms of partnerships. The culture that we increasingly operate within – this kind of publish or perish culture – is all about immediate deliverables. Ignite was about giving people the space in which they could develop a relationship and work on something together.'

Igniting a project

Monney, who was then Community Employability and Arts Coordinator (formerly Chief Executive) of the Hangleton and Knoll Project, approached the University of Brighton CUPP while working with Brighton Festival and Brighton People's Theatre to help bring festival events to the community in Hangleton and Knoll (a less affluent area of Brighton). 'We wanted to understand what people's experiences of the arts were, the barriers to the festival, and what would work from the festival out in the community. We had set up a steering group of local residents and then I approached the Ignite programme and was put in touch with Helen. We both had very tangible, practical, current things that we wanted to achieve that supported each other's aims.'

Given Johnson's role as Co-Director of the University of Brighton's Centre for Arts and Wellbeing, and her research on participatory and art-space research methods, she was happy to take on the project. 'I think it's important to say that the arts are valuable in their own right and not to just take an instrumental approach… but we also know that the arts seem to have a really important impact on a whole range of different measures around health and wellbeing and community cohesion.'

However, Johnson explains that there is a big gap in the groups of people who access arts, particularly publicly-funded arts: 'You get the usual suspects – the white middle class people who are the ones who are accessing a lot of publicly-funded arts provision, so you get this participation gap, and that seems to be mirrored on a local level. Brighton is incredibly rich and diverse in terms of cultural and artistic activities but then you had really small percentage of people in economically deprived areas like Hangleton and Knoll booking tickets for things like Brighton Fringe Festival.'

Johnson points out that this participation gap is particularly troubling when those people living in more deprived areas would benefit the most from access to the arts. 'The question we had was, is this something that people want to do and are they being stopped from doing it?'

At this time Johnson had been developing a participatory arts-based research method called Collaborative Poetics which uses poetry and spoken word in particular. She developed a resource pack so community groups and artists could use this method to help answer their own research questions. 'In an ideal world that would involve a long-term partnership between academics and artists and communities, but the pack is made to be used flexibly, so also includes individual worksheets that you can use independently. So I went along, met this group of residents, taught them how to use Collaborative Poetics and gave them the resource packs and sent them off on their way to do research, and then came back in and worked with them on data analysis and dissemination.'

Johnson says she 'went into a couple of workshops, teaching them the method and helping them set up the study. We did things like exploring our experiences of the arts and what the arts meant to us using these methods… coming up with a basic research design, and then they went off and did a questionnaire and came back with the data.'

Monney says one of the best parts of the project for her had been seeing how it inspired members of the community group to turn their hand to research methods. 'There was one member of the steering group who hadn't had a good experience with education, but she got really into doing data analysis. She met with Helen separately and did some of the analysis with her – it was amazing and it shows what can happen when people are given the chance to thrive. That person has also since helped with the data analysis for a consultation we did for a local park!'

'Everyone has something to bring'

I ask Monney about the best things in community work. 'Seeing people's journeys. It doesn't happen overnight, but you build relationships with people and then see them go from not really speaking or having confidence in their ideas, to a total change in their body language and demeanour and belief in themselves. A lot of that is down to the fact that, so often, people are defined by their problems. What's wrong? What are they lacking? But when you work in the community you see the strengths, you see passions and resilience, you see people who are activists and want to make a change. That's the starting point. It's about working together to find solutions and not putting all the onus on one group or another. It's recognising that everyone has something to bring to find a solution.'

The group developed a data poem from their study and held a sharing of learning event with stakeholders in the community including local arts organisations, public sector groups and local residents. Johnson said the results of the study challenged the idea of the arts participation gap – with the community having a very rich artistic and cultural life. 'We found that people wanted to engage in all kinds of art, but there were a whole load of barriers that stopped them from doing it. Some were things like childcare and travel, some were around not feeling like it was really theirs for them to engage with.'

It was, Johnson says, 'a story which really challenged this deficit approach of "poor working class people don't understand the arts". They understood the benefits of the arts on an individual and community level. This idea that they're not doing the arts and they're not really interested or don't get how important they are was not substantiated at all, and there was a really big call for a local community arts venue.'

Monney said while the findings from the Ignite project were not too surprising, they provided concrete evidence of what the local community wanted. 'You can speak truth to power, but it doesn't always lead to change… if you can show the evidence from these communities, it's harder to ignore.'

Monney and Johnson are continuing to work together now that Monney has moved over to Brighton's Trust for Developing Communities (TDC). They have received funds from Ignite, and the TDC has secured AHRC Impact funding, to develop Johnson's Collaborative Poetics resource pack. 'We're in the process of making something much, much, smaller and more accessible. We're working with this traffic light system, where we've got a red version which is no arts, the green version is essentially Collaborative Poetics and then the amber version includes some creative activities if you're feeling brave enough!'

Johnson has also recently received funding from the AHRC to develop an Everyday Creativity Research Network – which ties into much she gained from working with the Hangleton and Knoll Project. 'I want to explore the presence and importance of the meaning and value of everyday creativity as opposed to elite forms of creativity. Not just the arts but creativity in gardening and crafting and problem-solving, as well as things like community choirs and painting on rocks, and all of those things that are embedded in people's everyday lives. That network is very much intended to go beyond simply academic involvement. We're working with creative practitioners, we're working with people in the public sector, we're working with community groups to bring them into the network.'

'Just do it… but listen'

I ask Johnson and Monney for their advice for students or psychologists who would like to work more closely within their own local communities or other community groups. Monney says it depended on the type of work: 'I'd say you definitely need to come into communities with an open mind that works with, listens, responds and collaborates. Equally valuing partners is a good start.'

Johnson suggests that students explore national volunteering agencies and organisations and be aware of the many transferable skills volunteering can offer. 'For academics who want to work with partners and carry out research with them I'd say, just do it… but I would also say listen, and be prepared for it not to be about you if you really want to carry out research that is meaningful and impactful. Listen to what people need, what people want and what's important to them, and then find the point of connection that enables you to do what you need to do. It can really pay dividends and you can produce meaningful and impactful work that makes a difference. I do think it's really important to value the contribution of community partners and not just see people as participants to be mined for data, but people you can work with to solve a problem.' 

Johnson has also used community-university partnerships in her teaching – running a master's degree module on the University of Brighton Community Psychology programme called Social Research Practise, where students work with community partners to carry out research. She also runs a second-year placement module to encourage students to engage with communities in volunteering roles and reflect on their experiences. 

'The principle of that module is about the tripartite mission of universities. We often think of universities as being about creating literate citizens, and they often get reduced to simply that dimension, but the origins of the university were based on three poles – creating literate citizens is one of them and building our understanding of the world is another one. The third is about supporting and working with communities – and that one often gets forgotten in a context where education has become monetised. There's a real desire to do this work among students and an increasing desire among academics, and there's definitely a desire from community partners, but that isn't always well supported more broadly by the people who have control over the purse strings.'

Johnson emphasises the importance of properly investing in community-university partnerships to create a better and more meaningful world. 'Working closely with communities and genuinely respecting the knowledge and expertise that community partners bring is so important. It can be difficult as academics to relinquish power and authority, but I think it's really, really vital.'