Blog by Amy Sanders and Jurgen Grotz
On Tuesday, 25th June 2024 the Voluntary Sector Studies Network, Volunteer Now, NICVA, ARK, Queen’s University Belfast and Ulster University jointly hosted a symposium in Belfast to explore pathways to collaborating on voluntary and community sector research in Northern Ireland.
We recognised that research within and about the voluntary and community sector springs up in many different settings and across a range of disciplines. One of the challenges faced by colleagues in Northern Ireland is to not lose past expertise on Northern Irish voluntary and community sector research, to collate existing knowledge and connect with others interested in the voluntary and community sector research.
John Smith, the Deputy Secretary of Community, Places and Local Government Group at the Department for Communities, Northern Ireland, delivered the first keynote on ‘the value that Government policymakers place on the insights and knowledge shared by stakeholders, including the Voluntary and Community sector, and how that feeds into the design and delivery of our programmes and policies’. Click here to read his complete remarks.
Our second keynote speaker was Jill Cornforth, Grants Manager, The Ideas Fund, British Science Association, explaining how the Ideas Fund connects communities with researchers to work on mental wellbeing projects. Click here to listen to her talk.
During four interactive sessions we asked the question ‘Why connect collaborative researchers?’, aimed to map out collaborative research in Northern Ireland, discussed how we could strengthen collaborative research and how we could build on existing and create new connections.
Jointly we concluded that:
Collaborative research is not just about individual projects or research projects – it is about building up relationships.
Be aware of the power of building relationships. Take every opportunity to build new relationships.
An example of the kind of collaborative work we should aim for is the Community Research Collective which was set up across the Ideas Fund.
One way to engage researchers is to make sure that you have a researcher sitting on the board of a voluntary or community organisation.
Gallery
Denise Hayward, Volunteer Now – welcome at the start of the day
Carl Milofsky chairs Session 1 with Wendy Osborne, Nick Acheson and Feilim O Hadhmaill
Claire Dorris, National Children’s Bureau in her World Cafe session
Martin McMullan, Youth Action and Dirk Schobotz, QUB in their World Cafe session
Linda McKendry, Compass Advocacy Network (CAN) in her World Cafe session
Dirk Schobutz, Queen’s University Belfast explains the Ark in Session 3
Kate Clifford calls for more research on rural communities in Session 3
Eileen Martin explains the aims of Science Shop in Session 3
Amy Sanders, WISERD and VSSN, facilitated the final dialogue session on voluntary sector research networks & future collaborations
