Valuing Academic Perspectives

Abstract

First paragraph: This report summarises a number of evaluative studies carried out in the neighbourhood of Wester Hailes, Edinburgh in the summer of 2014 by a team of academics, as part of a wider Arts and Humanities Research Council funded Connected Communities project Valuing Different Perspectives (VDP).1 The overall project sought to use a range of evaluative perspectives to the study of a number of previous AHRC Connected Communities projects: Community Hacking 2.0, Ladders to the Clouds, and the Communities Within Spaces of Flows projects.2 The projects produced diverse outputs for the local community: a totem pole; a social history walking "code book"; wall plaques (in preparation); the renewal of the local newspaper The Wester Hailes Sentinel as an online ‘hyper-local' news source, The Digital Sentinel; and a local partnership called Our Place in Time. The earlier Connected Communities projects also supported the local housing association (Prospect Community Housing [PCHA]) in continuing their use of the social history Facebook page From There to Here.