Introduction

This chapter provides insight into the development of the ‘Ordsall method’, a step-by-step guide to community-led research activity. The method was developed in collaboration with local organisations and individuals in Salford, NW England, during the Cultural intermediation: connecting communities in the creative urban economyproject. It emerged during a community engagement phase in an attempt to overcome obstacles such as power imbalance, stifling bureaucracy and local indifference.

The method's design was informed by an ethnographic approach which helped identify the critical challenges in the project and work out ways of stimulating enthusiasm and interest in project activities. It focused on existing priorities and interests within the community and, when people’s responses changed dramatically from hostility to enthusiasm, we decided to record and share this method as a positive example of research-oriented engagement. The subsequent ‘Ordsall method’ provides a process for others to use when developing research projects in communities.

The method emphasises two key components for participatory research: first, develop research activities in conjunction with the aspirations of people in the target community; and, second, work with local intermediaries to support and enthuse people about the project. The step-by-step approach provides a structured framework to build new research projects.

This chapter describes the maelstrom of local angst about disappearing communities, rising property prices and avowals of alienation in a backdrop of national austerity and rapidly shrinking public sector services. Developed in the 2010s, the research period took place during the international conflicts that stimulated national and local debate about incoming migration, refugee and asylum seekers ‘escaping’ to Britain. The research ended just before the vote for Brexit (the UK leaving the European Union) and echoes of these anxieties appear in the project findings.

While the Cultural intermediation project began as an enquiry into the role of cultural mediators, austerity Britain in the run-up to Brexit forced a different kind of enquiry – one focused on people’s understanding of culture itself. We went into the community expecting conversations about culture as art, theatre, music and performance; we left again with a new framing of culture as how people make their lives meaningful (Symons, forthcoming).

This chapter demonstrates how anthropological methods such as participant observation generate understanding of local priorities in areas targeted for research.