Students research what makes our local communities thrive

Students at the University of Sheffield are working with local residents to discover what helps diverse communities to thrive and the barriers they face to achieve this, in order to improve lives in communities across the UK.

The students are working with residents in Sharrow, Heeley and Nether Edge to collect and analyse residents’ narratives of their own communities, co-producing resources that reveal key issues at the heart of their community.

Recently a new group of students took over the work of those who began the project last semester. The students will publish findings and stories on Storying Sheffield and produce a toolkit for others to develop similar projects in different locations across the country.

The module is part of Storying Sheffield, an initiative developed by Professor Brendan Stone from the University of Sheffield’s School of English that focuses on partnerships between students and the local community, often working to help people on the margins of society to have their voices heard.

Professor Stone said: “As with other Storying Sheffield initiatives, the work requires the building of sustained and respectful partnerships, and a genuine desire to work with and alongside, rather than on, a highly diverse range of individuals.

“We wanted to build knowledge with residents and stakeholders about the functioning of diverse communities and in particular to build understandings about how and why such communities thrive, or sometimes don’t.”

Researching Community Stories was developed in response to the work of the previous High Sheriff of South Yorkshire, Andrew Coombe, who during his term of office brought a number of stakeholders together in order to build a means to answer these and other questions. Julie Kenny, the current High Sheriff, has continued supporting the project over her term of office.

Professor Stone and Dr David Forrest worked with colleagues from the City Council to develop a number of means of collaborating with residents to elicit insight into and produce knowledge about the community’s needs and assets.

Initial research was undertaken last year, chiefly in primary schools, in which children drew maps of their neighbourhoods and annotated these with stories, giving insight into how they felt about particular locations, services, and events. David and Brendan then developed a course for University students to lead the next stages of the research.

Over the last few months, undergraduates have been taking this work forward in many different settings, and are already starting to produce a detailed picture of what residents consider to be the pressing issues, and the best assets, for their community.

Professor Stone said: “As a teacher in the University, one of the many exciting things about Researching Community Stories is that the students’ work will not only end up on my desk but will also be fed to the stakeholders in the project (community centres, groups, and residents, the City Council, churches and mosques, etc), and used to inform actions and policies, and enhance and deepen understandings. It’s also inspiring to see the way in which students have embraced a very different form of learning, and met the challenges of taking part in a real-life research project.”

Eight students from the Researching Community Stories module presented a paper at the University's Learning and Teaching Conference in January this year. Hannah Bratley, Andy Beasley,Charlie Wren, Cathy Sables, Andrea Antoniou, Lucy Kempster, and Fiona Boddy spoke about the benefits of taking the module.

Andy Beasley, 21, said: "Throughout this module we have had to employ a range of real life skills which relate not only to our studies but to the real world. University students often talk about being in ‘the bubble’, the protective film which covers everything you do within your degree, making it not quite real... This module begins to pierce through that bubble. We met people on this module who did not fit into our categories and so we had to learn, quickly and on our feet how to work with them to achieve the results we needed but also to make sure that their needs were met as well."

Graham Duncan, Director of St Mary's Community Centre, Sharrow, said: "It is fantastic to work with students from the University of Sheffield. They have brought a really fresh and exciting approach to understanding the challenges which local communities are facing, and in working alongside residents to identify assets and strengths. Their work on this project has been creative and innovative, and it is remarkable to see the depth of insight which has already been generated. I am greatly looking forward to continuing this work with the University."

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Storying Sheffield - Researching Community Stories The University of Sheffield With nearly 25,000 of the brightest students from 125 countries coming to learn alongside 1,181 of the world’s best academics, it is clear why the University of Sheffield is one of the UK’s leading universities. Staff and students at Sheffield are committed to helping discover and understand the causes of things - and propose solutions that have the power to transform the world we live in.



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