Collaborative community research dissemination and networking: Experiences and challenges

Since their earliest establishment, there has been a continuous preoccupation with what role universities might have in relation to their communities when faced with the challenge to be '...of and not just in their community'. Social responsibility has now been identified as a core function of a higher education institution (HEI) (Parsons 2014), with significant consideration being given in the literature to how to conduct collaborative, engaged or community-based participatory research (see, for example, Benneworth et al. 2009; Boser 2006; Hart, Madisson and Wolff 2007; Macpherson 2011; Savan and Sider 2003; Wright et al. 2011). What is persistently absent, however, is how to follow that principle through to forms of collaborative research dissemination and networking beyond open access publishing. This practice article reports on our experiences of a collaborative exhibition (from planning to delivery) at the Research Showcase event held in Cardiff in June 2014. The event was part of the larger Connected Communities Programme established by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council. One of the aims of the program is to get community partners more involved in the entirety of the research process, from setting research priorities to disseminating research findings.