By Claire Monks, Amy Moon, and Ann Hanrahan
The Greenwich Project is an Institute of Lifecourse Development strategy to provide longitudinal and reactive studies to support our academic, knowledge exchange and community engagement endeavours. We will be examining the feasibility of setting up two ground-breaking inter-related projects within the Royal Borough of Greenwich. These projects will take an innovative long-term perspective on research and community working. They will aid us in strengthening the links that the Institute for Lifecourse Development and the wider University of Greenwich have with the local community. The Royal Borough of Greenwich is a diverse community, and it is vitally important that we understand people’s varied experiences by conducting research that can meaningfully inform and support the development of policy and practice to ultimately make a positive difference to people’s lives within the borough.
We are in the early design stages of what we call ‘The Greenwich Project’. We want to create a project which will have two parts.
Part 1 is research which will follow a group of Greenwich families every year. It will ask questions about their home and families, education, social lives and how they live and work.
Part 2 is a community panel – a group of Greenwich people who answer questions about topical issues. For example, the cost-of-living crisis or local transport or a particular health issue like the flu. It will be a means of seeing how issues impact on peoples lives and how (and if) they can adapt well and what they need to do so.
We have now launched a survey by sending out emails to a few selected Greenwich organisations to ask them to share it with their members. We have asked these organisations to take part in either the survey or interviews with us with a voucher reward and are awaiting responses.
This study has the potential to improve the lives of Greenwich residents in many ways, including highlighting policies that are needed.
More information on involvement and the aims of this research can be found on our website: https://blogs.gre.ac.uk/centre-for-vulnerable-children-families/%pagename%/