Science Together 2025–2026
Eight community-led initiatives with university public engagement facilitators and researchers will take place in 2025-26. Projects are focused on themes such as youth voice, nutritional health, climate awareness and resilience and the assessment of economic, social or wellbeing impact. Projects include early identification of young carers, developing a carbon calculator for second hand goods, helping a network of cultural organisations to reduce their dependence on fossil fuels, supporting an impact assessment for a 'Dance for Dementia' programme, establishing youth boards and evaluation tools to improve refugee services and creating resources for people with learning disabilities to improve their nutrition.
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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.
The 2025-26 programme kicks off in October 2025 with training for university facilitators and researchers, a project team matchmaking session and a project development workshop led by Wyn Griffiths from SMASHfestUK.
In January and February 2026 further networking and training events will be delivered to support project teams with problem solving, qualitative impact evaluations and to share tools for assessment of project success.
You can read more about the 2025-26 community partners and projects below.
THE community partners 2025-26
What they do: Provide support to young carers (8-17yo) in Oxfordshire, helping them to build resilience, improve wellbeing and reach their full potential.
Project: Standing beside Oxfordshire’s young carers
Helping Oxfordshire’s young carers to be seen and supported.
Be Free Young Carers is dedicated entirely to supporting young people who care for family members. We want to help identify young carers earlier, ensuring those who often remain unseen are finally recognised and understood. Many young carers grow up too fast — balancing school, household responsibilities, and emotional pressure. Their childhood becomes limited, their well-being may suffer, and too often, their hard work goes unnoticed. We aim to change that by raising awareness, recognising hidden young carers, and making sure they receive the support they deserve.
Our mission is simple: to recognise young carers, champion their needs, and give them the freedom, confidence, and opportunities every young person deserves. With the right support, young carers don’t just cope — they thrive, and Be Free Young Carers is here to make that possible, beginning with ensuring every young carer in Oxfordshire is identified, valued, and supported.
What they do: Provide person-centred care and respite support for people with dementia and their carers through day centres and a community bus service.
Project: Assessing the economic impact of Daybreak's services
The charity would like to collaborate with researchers to quantify the economic impact of its services on local health systems and the wider community. While Daybreak’s impact is well evidenced through stories and qualitative data, the next step is to develop robust methodologies that measure outcomes such as reduced NHS demand, delayed care home admissions, and sustained carer employment. This partnership would strengthen Daybreak’s ability to secure funding and sustain vital services and create a model for other small charities facing similar challenges, offering sector-wide benefits.
What they do: Support people out of homelessness by providing a home, meaningful work, and opportunities to build a stable future. They run a social enterprise store selling second-hand items, which helps companions gain skills and confidence, and diverts around 250 tonnes of goods from landfill each year through reuse and recycling.
Project: Developing a carbon calculator for second-hand goods
Working collaboratively, companions, staff, and researchers are developing a carbon calculator for the second-hand goods sold and recycled through the Emmaus store. The calculator will support mutual learning, enabling customers to see the climate impact of their purchases, donors to understand the value of their contributions, and Emmaus to evidence environmental and social outcomes for funders and partners.
Green Arts Oxfordshire Network
What they do: Bring together artists, cultural organisations and communities to tackle the climate and ecological emergency through collaboration, creativity and regenerative practice. With over 35 organisations signed up to its Green Arts Charter, GAON support cultural leaders to take practical steps towards sustainability while inspiring change through their creative work.
Project: Building a solar-powered culture consortium
GAON would like to collaborate with researchers to explore the feasibility of a ‘Solar-Powered Culture Consortium’, connecting Oxfordshire’s arts venues to collectively adopt renewable energy solutions and energy-saving building modifications. The collaboration would provide vital data and ethical insight to help cultural spaces transition to clean energy at scale, strengthen community resilience, and help build a more sustainable cultural sector.
What they do: Build the confidence and English language skills of children and young people from disadvantaged migrant, refugee and asylum-seeking communities in Oxford, helping them to access an education and fulfil their potential.
Project: Learning from Jacari’s young voices
Progressing exchange of knowledge and experience between Jacari and the children and young people they work with in order to help them fulfil their potential.
Our project aims for the voices of these children and young people to play a greater role in informing decision making within Jacari, so that the charity can be built on shared values and trust. We will explore the methods and opportunities for engaging Jacari’s pupils that are inclusive, safe, and facilitate meaningful and lasting change, with our initial aim being to co-design a new focus group programme with Jacari’s pupils.
What they do: Develop and perform creative dance, movement, and music sessions for older people, including those living with age-related health conditions such as Parkinson’s and dementia. Their mission is to enrich lives, reduce loneliness and inactivity, and support independence and wellbeing.
Project: Steps of joy in Oxford – celebrating movement and music with people living with dementia
Developing a pilot ‘Dance for dementia’ programme to find out how dance benefits participants.
How does dance benefit people with dementia? Our pilot programme 'Dance for dementia' seeks to answer this question by offering dance classes combining movement and live music to support older adults living with dementia. The sessions are led by experienced artists and supported by a team of volunteers, inviting people living with dementia to share a creative experience along with their families, friends and caregivers. Gathering feedback from the participants, we will analyse their comments in order to develop and validate future programmes.
What they do: Provide services so that all refugee children and young people can access and thrive in education. In Oxford, the charity runs a 4-week Orientation Programme offering intensive English lessons and life skills sessions to newly arrived unaccompanied asylum-seeking children while they wait for school places.
Project: Evidencing impact of our orientation programme
Evaluating Refugee Education UK’s orientation programme for asylum-seeking unaccompanied children.
“After an information session with Thames Valley Police, many students on the REUK orientation programme chat with officers about football. A compassionate and student-centred approach can change unaccompanied asylum-seeking children's view of law enforcement from a threat to a group of people they can go to for help."
Our project focuses on gathering evidence for the impact of REUK’s orientation programme on effectively building young people’s confidence, wellbeing, and understanding of life in the UK during their early arrival period. This evidence will be used to prepare a toolkit for replicating the programme in other local authority areas.
What they do: Work with people with learning disabilities and autism, providing meaningful activities to build confidence, skills and wellbeing, and support progression to living independent lives.
Project: Eating Well Living Well
Supporting members in good diet decisions
Yellow Submarine members often struggle to regulate their food intake and are vulnerable to over-eating fatty or sugary foods. They need support to better understand the impact of diet on their bodies and to develop strategies to help them to manage temptation and the lure of advertising. This collaboration with researchers focusses on the development of engaging educational experiences, practical experiments and useful tools that will help members to improve their nutrition and lead healthier lives, as well as evaluating what difference this support makes for the members.