Ecosystem Mapping and Engagement
Joseph Rowntree Foundation
CONNECTED BY DATA was commissioned by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) to improve their understanding of the current landscape and stakeholders they want to support, work with, influence and inspire as they create a new insight and analysis infrastructure to help improve how the ecosystem understands inequalities, and how to solve them.
Between November 2022 and May 2023 we carried out desk research, surveying the field, and conducting interviews to map the ecosystem of users and beneficiaries of this insight infrastructure. Between January and May 2023 we ran a number of workshops to create a shared vision for the insight infrastructure, and design an ongoing governance, stakeholder engagement and communications strategy. We also supported the JRF team as they developed their plans for, and started to implement, the infrastructure.
Events
On Thursday 20th April, the Connected by Data team (Tim, Obioma and Alan) participated in a meeting of the Grassroots Poverty Action Group (GPAG). This group provides regular input for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF), helping to ensure that the Foundation’s work is informed by people with lived experience of poverty and inequality from across the UK. We met with the members of GPAG as part of the stakeholder and ecosystem mapping that we are doing with JRF to support the design of a poverty insight infrastructure.
We recently hosted our penultimate JRF ecosystem mapping and engagement workshop to discuss our working draft of stakeholder engagement and the governance strategies for the insight infrastructure project.
On 6th March 2023, we hosted the second of our workshop sessions to explore the potential ecosystem around, and stakeholder engagement in, Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) plans to develop an Insight Infrastructure on poverty in the UK.
You can read a write-up of the workshop here.
On 21st February, we hosted the first of our workshop sessions to explore the potential ecosystem around, and stakeholder engagement in, Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) plans to develop an Insight Infrastructure on poverty in the UK.
You can read a write-up of the workshop here.
Opinion
On Monday 6th March, participants from 12 organisations working on issues related to poverty gathered for a workshop in London to dream, imagine and envision potential directions for an ‘insight infrastructure’ to support action on poverty, social and economic inequality.
This was the second workshop in an appreciative inquiry series. The first‘Discovery’ session is documented here.
In this post, we summarise some of the key themes explored in the workshop, and document the ideas and suggestions made that will feed into the next workshop, which will focus on the design of stakeholder engagement, and governance proposals for insight infrastructure.
This week we had the first of our workshop sessions to explore the potential ecosystem around, and stakeholder engagement in, Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) plans to develop an Insight Infrastructure on poverty in the UK.
Below I’ve written up an initial synthesis of the session.
We are working on a project with the Joseph Rowntree Foundation to help them understand the ecosystem around their work to develop an insight infrastructure for social and economic inequalities, and how to engage with it.
One of the things that’s been a bit challenging to pin down is how to think about what an “insight infrastructure” actually is or does. Is it just a fancy name for what’s essentially a data portal? Or the long term development of system-wide change? Is it intended to be a set of services that JRF will provide? Or a shared movement they’re building? I’ve been drawing on previous work to provide a couple of ways of thinking about what insight and insight infrastructures actually are.
Weeknotes