Durham Community Action and the Rural Design Centre are continuing to explore how to support the development of Community Research Networks in County Durham.  We are pleased to introduce a series of practical workshops to build skills and knowledge amongst VCS organisations who want to develop further insight into community research.

In the first session, we are collaborating with HiCraft who use creative methods to delve deeper into community issues and topics for research. HiCraft provides a welcoming space and craft activities to facilitate conversations using participatory research methods for drawing out conversations about people’s concerns. Lunch will also be provided.

Participants in this half-day workshop will explore how creative activities can help us understand issues around connectedness, wellbeing and young people.

HiCraft will demonstrate a craft-oriented ‘thinking through making’ activity, as the foundation for discussions about connections and networks within your communities and look at how these can be used within participants’ organisations as tools for engagement and for community research.

HiCraft are a group of researchers based at Northumbria and Newcastle University who are investigating how we can define and foster a healthy relationship between people, the internet and things through the ethos of craft. We are keen to discuss and understand how a broad range of people, in range of contexts, experience digital connectedness and connected things – the benefits, challenges and possible preferable alternatives.

https://hicraftnorthumbria.org/