Bite-sized

Day 1: Thursday, 12 September

Cathays Futures is a pilot action research project that tests out innovative approaches to knowledge mobilisation and co-production through combining community know-how, lived experience, research findings & varied professional skills. Focusing on the diverse Cathays community in Cardiff, we convened a 'Futures Labs' that brought together residents, social scientists, place-based civic partners and community groups, third sector organisations and engagement professionals. The Labs provided space for this collective and varied expertise to reimagine and begin to create socially just futures for Cathays. This session will showcase the project and its results, critically examining what worked well, what didn't, and most importantly, why. It will provide a bite-sized introduction to the experimental participatory futures and knowledge exchange methods applied in the work that we feel are pertinent to the future of social sciences. Key conceptual questions connected to the project will be used to ignite discussion within the session, examining the role of such methods in creating a wiser society and supporting epistemic justice. The session asks attendees to think outside of established comfort zones about how knowledge is produced and used, and how silos between different expertise can be broken down to create equitable futures. It will be delivered by a mixture of case study presentation, discussion and Q&A. Attendees will be provided with food-for-thought on how they can work across expertise and sectors to generate and apply knowledge in and beyond academia, as well as being signposted to future-oriented methodologies they can apply in their own work.