Science Together 2024–2025
Science Together 2024–25 is underway! Eight community-led initiatives are taking place with university facilitators and researchers, focusing on themes such as mental health support, inclusivity, well-being and skill development. Projects include training for police officers, a holiday club for young people with Down’s Syndrome, nature challenges as part of a primary school radio show, concerts for people with dementia and their carers and workshops exploring the use of local bio-based materials for affordable housing.
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Andrew Bailey
Launched in 2021, Science Together is a community-first engagement programme, coordinated by staff at the University of Oxford with support from Oxford Brookes University. It aims to nurture mutually beneficial collaborations between researchers and community partners to improve the lives of people in Oxfordshire and accelerate impact from university research.
This year's programme kicked off in October 2024 with a project development workshop led by Wyn Griffiths (SMASHfestUK). Participants engaged in collaborative brainstorming and blue sky thinking to explore ideas. Eight new project groups were formed and more focused plans began to take shape. In January and February 2025 three training sessions were delivered to support teams with qualitative impact evaluations and to share tools for assessment of project success. You can read more about this year’s community partners and projects below.
Meet this year's community partners
What they do: Mental health provision for young people including one-on-one support, crisis intervention, and activities in safe spaces for positive distraction.
Project: Evaluating Community Suicide Prevention Training for Police Officers
The team are partnering with Thames Valley Police (TVP) to provide ASIST suicide prevention training to first responders and the team are using the Storytelling evaluation method as part of an approach to assess the impact of the training on the confidence, skills and readiness of TVP staff.
What they do: Provide information, support, events and activities for people with Down’s Syndrome and their families living in Oxfordshire.
Project: Holiday Clubs to Assist Transition
The team are organising a pilot holiday club for children and young people (aged 8-14) with Downs Syndrome. Taking place during the May school half term 2025, the pilot aims to provide a holiday club format that mirrors a school day, recruit and train student volunteers to support the delivery of activities and provide health and wellbeing support for the attendees. This holiday club pilots a new provision for Downs Syndrome Oxford and the team will be assessing the impact of this model, how it assists with transitions between school holidays and term-time and evaluating opportunities for future rollout across the country.
What they do: Provide a supportive learning environment for adults and young people who feel marginalised or excluded in other education settings. Students include asylum seekers, refugees, individuals in the care system and those failed by mainstream education.
Project: Building a Sustainable Life
The team want to create a series of six sessions for adult learners that help them develop their speaking and listening skills, envision what a sustainable life in Oxford means to them and develop a plan of action to help them achieve their goals.
What they do: Use dance classes, workshops and outreach programmes to develop skills, build confidence and improve the well-being of young people. Create performances to empower excluded voices and explore social issues.
Project: Dance for Meaningful Change
The team are developing some standardised evaluation processes to help to assess the impact of regular dance participation on the social, emotional and physical wellbeing of young people. They will be piloting surveys and approaches with young people of all ages who are part of Body Politic dance programmes.
What they do: Facilitate the integration of refugees, asylum seekers and vulnerable migrants in Oxfordshire by providing psychological, social and practical support to Increase confidence, enable independence and reduce isolation.
Project: Empowering Voices, Building Communities
The team are working with the Refugee Advisory Group (RAG) to strengthen client voices in the way that Refugee Resource design, implement and improve their services in areas such as training, counselling, mentoring, signposting and social interaction opportunities. There is a focus on supporting and training RAG members to gather feedback from underrepresented voices in the community, including asylum seekers living in hotels and male Refugee Resource clients.
St Mary’s Catholic Primary School
What they do: Provision of state primary school education complemented with physical, creative and social activities including the school’s own Lighthouse radio station run with pupils.
Project: School Radio for Wellbeing and Connection with Nature
The team are introducing regular ‘try at home’ nature challenges into the weekly school radio show “Wellbeing Wednesdays”, which is co-presented by Year 5 and 6 pupils. They will assess the engagement with these activities and qualitatively evaluate the impact of participation on children’s well-being.
What they do: Act as long-term steward of land and assets on it, ensuring they are used to benefit local people. Have a focus on tackling the housing crisis in Oxfordshire through the development of affordable, sustainable, community-led housing projects.
Project: Regenerative Community Building
The team are exploring how to build more socially- and ecologically- regenerative affordable housing using local, bio-based materials. Workshops in summer 2025 will bring together a broad cross-section of community members to learn practical regenerative building skills. Researchers from Oxford’s universities will evaluate these workshops, documenting the social and ecological benefits of building in this way, and identifying how to refine this approach in the future.
What they do: Promote and provide inclusive music experiences for health and wellbeing, including singing for adults with lung conditions and concerts for people with dementia and their carers. They provide training and consultancy on the benefits of singing.
Project: Moving Music
The team are assessing the value and impact of Sound Resource's Moving Music concerts for people with dementia and their carers. This includes an assessment of the cost effectiveness and social value of the concerts, mapping data looking at aspects such as where people come from and the location of complementary provision and using Storytelling evaluation approaches to provide qualitative insights.