Collaborative action research can be fertile ground for exploration, experimentation, reflection and learning. When it brings together higher education, practice and communities as research partners, it can produce new knowledge that informs teaching, practice and policy, as well as practical approaches, tools and resources for communities and practitioners. In our experience, it can also help build lasting relationships and have a profound impact on the people, organisations and communities involved.
About this Series
This new online event series, Research Rooms, is a collaboration between The Glass-House Community Led Design and the Open University’s Design Group. These events will share learning, resources and anecdotes from the many research projects we have done together.
Research Rooms are informal online spaces for conversation with members of the research team from academia, practice and communities. Those attending can learn about the projects, their outputs and outcomes and the influence they have had on those involved. There will also be space to share your own experience and explorations of the project themes.
Research Room 1: Scaling Up Co-design
21 October 2025, 4-5 pm, online
In this session we will look back on the project, Scaling Up Co-design Research and Practice, which brought together academic and civil society partners to explore how to extend the impact and reach of our own work, to extract learning on different co-design practices, and to develop approaches and tools to help others take up and benefit from co-design.
Research Room 2: Asset-based Co-design
25 November 2025, 4-5 pm, online
In this session, we’ll look across three research projects (Media, Community and the Creative Citizen, Unearth Hidden Assets and Comparative Asset Mapping) in which we both focused on, and developed approaches and tools to support asset mapping in the context of design and placemaking.
Research Room 3: Empowering Design Practices
27 January 2026, 4-5 pm, online
In this session we will look back on the project, Empowering Design Practices. This 7-year project explored the landscape of historic places of worship and communities leading change within them. We worked with communities to explore the values that inspire and hinder the wider use of historic places of worship and what benefits and impacts community-led design practices can bring.
Working with live projects, we also co-designed new practices and practical resources, providing hands-on support to communities to help them lead projects to transform their historic places of worship.
Research Room 4: Starting from values
24 February 2026, 4-5 pm, online
In this session we will look back on our participation in the project, Starting from Values, which brought together partners from two Connected Communities research projects, Scaling Up Co-Design and the Authority Research Network, with the Values and Sustainability Research Group at Brighton University . The project aim was to co-develop creative ways of identifying, evaluating and enhancing intangible, values-related aspects of project legacies.
Research Room 5: Incubating Civic Leadership
24 March 2026, 4-5 pm, online
In this session we will look back on Incubating Civic Leadership, a project exploring civic leadership and how different actors can be brought together to co-design ideas, innovations and actions that push boundaries and address challenges at a local and global level.
This knowledge exchange project brought together groups and organisations across sectors and of varied scale in London and Bristol. Through both online and in-person activities, we shared learning and ideas and experimented together through simple interactive urban activities aimed at galvanising people to improve their local places.
Research Room 6: Cross-pollination
28 April 2026, 4-5 pm, online
In this session we will look back on the project Cross-pollination: Growing cross-sector design collaboration in placemaking. This research project created a focused space to further explore and develop our cross-pollination approach, which we had been evolving and experimenting with over many years and through a range of projects and programmes. The cross-pollination approach brings people together to identify shared goals and objectives, identify and connect local projects and initiatives, and work together to unearth and mobilise local assets (skills, networks, physical spaces, tools and resources, funding pots etc ) as a basis for forming partnerships and collaborations.
In particular, through this research, we were interested in how this approach could serve place-based collaborations across sectors and engaging groups and organisations of different scales. It also created the space to explore how we could enable others to take up, adapt and use the approach within their own contexts.
How to Take Part
Research Rooms are open to anyone with an interest in the event topic. No specific experience or expertise is required. We believe that these conversations will only benefit from a wide mix of voices, interests and experiences.
These are free events, but places are limited to create space for meaningful discussion for all involved.
How to Book
Click on the links above to find out more about our upcoming Research Rooms and to register for your free place.
More Research Room events coming soon.