The project

Over the past 2.5 years, the Pathways through Participation research project, led by NCVO in partnership with Involve and the Institute of Volunteering Research (IVR), and funded by the Big Lottery Fund, has explored how and why people participate in a range of different activities over the course of their lives  – from volunteering in a hospice to responding to a local consultation, purchasing fair-trade products to voting. We launched the final report of the project last week (13 September); both the full report and a summary report are now available on our website.

The event

We are pleased to invite you tothe following event to present our key findings and look at the implications of the research for local engagement and democracy.

Date: Tuesday 18 October 2011

Time: 4.00 to 6.00

Venue: Committee Room 12, Houses of Parliament, Cromwell Green entrance (ask to be directed towards the Committee Rooms)

This event will focus on the implications of the research findings in three main areas:

• the language and image of local engagement and democracy
• the practice of local engagement and democracy, especially local consultations
• the accessibility of local engagement and resources, especially issues of resources and equity

It will provide significant time for participants to explore the findings in small group discussions, and will also include brief reflections on the implications of the findings by Dr. Stella Creasy MP, Labour and Co-operative MP for Walthamstow, who was involved in the early stages of the project; Cllr Sir Merrick Cockell, Chairman of the Local Government Association and Leader of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea; and Tessy Britton, a social designer with extensive experience of researching and designing, among other things, collaborative methodologies, participation and community development.

For more information on this event, email Tim Hughes at Involve: tim@involve.org.uk. Otherwise, please click 'Register' above to attend this event.  

Other events

In addition, we are holding an event to look at the implications of the research findings for national policy agendas on 21 October. For more information and to register for this event, please visit http://nationalpolicyagendas.eventbrite.com/