Outreach to Ownership Research Pilot

The £250,000 pilot project is distributing funds to five partner organisations in Scotland and England:

• MSDS Marine and Moder Dy  (Scotland)
• The Scottish Council on Archives (Scotland)
• Heritage Lincolnshire (England)
• The Art House (England)
• The Churches Conservation Trust, the Heritage Trust Network (Scotland/England), Historic Churches Scotland and Churches Trust for Cumbria (Scotland/England)

Partners will co-deliver innovative research with community organisations. The research will investigate the social and economic value of a range of approaches to inclusive community engagement across the culture sector. 

Since January 2022 partners have been working together to share knowledge and experience as they develop their projects. Historic England and Historic Environment Scotland operate as a supportive research hub for the programme; distributing grants, delivering a capacity building programme, evaluating the programme with support from Bright Culture, and building the networks and promoting the research of partners.

Themes explored across the course of the pilot include:

• Community ownership of buildings or monuments
• Community delivery of inclusive cultural services
• Identifying and overcoming barriers to participation
• Promoting equality, diversity and inclusive best practice.

At the heart of the programme lies a commitment to encouraging active participation of communities in all of the research projects and ensuring that the research activities and creative outputs will be co-created with community participants. 

Working together, this innovative, co-creative research partnership will make a strong case to AHRC for a scaled-up version of the programme in the near future. It will also seek to influence funders, policymakers and researchers at large to recognise and better support inclusive community-led research across the culture sector.