Real-Time Community Insight Observatory

Real-Time Community Insight Observatory: Embedding Community Knowledge into Regional Decision-Making

Date and time: 19th May 2026, 12:00 – 14:30
Location: Institute for Collective Place Leadership (ICPL), Teesside University

As part of the North East Community Research Partnership, this roundtable brings together community organisations, practitioners, policymakers, commissioners, civic leaders, and university researchers to explore how real-time, hyper-local insight can better inform regional health, social, and economic decision-making.

Across the North East, communities consistently articulate interconnected challenges- relating to health inequalities, employability, rural isolation, food insecurity, housing, and access to services. Yet decision-making often relies on delayed or consultation-based evidence. This session will explore how more continuous and embedded approaches, including paid community researchers and peer-led mechanisms, can generate timely, place-based insight that reflects lived realities as they unfold.

Designed as a collaborative working session rather than a one-off consultation, the roundtable will explore how universities, civic institutions, and community partners can work together to design and test sustainable policy mechanisms for embedding community knowledge into decision-making. Particular attention will be given to approaches that enable continuous, trust-based insight generation beyond short-term engagement. It will create space for partners to think together in an open and exploratory way

The roundtable brings together those shaping and delivering regional policy and practice. Participants will have the opportunity to:

• Contribute to the early design of a North East Community Insight Observatory
• Share challenges and approaches from their own organisations
• Build connections across sectors to support more joined-up, place-based decision-making

By bringing together regional partners, the session will begin developing and testing a North East Community Insight Observatory- an ongoing mechanism connecting institutions and communities through equitable participation and sustained collaboration. Participants will be invited to contribute perspectives and help shape policy-relevant approaches. These will inform practical next steps, including potential partnerships and regional implementation.

Contributors include Katy Milne (Director, Northern Heartlands), Dr William McGovern (Associate Professor of Marginalised Communities and Academic Co-Lead for Patient and Public Involvement and Engagement, Northumbria University), Dr Nikki Carthy(Senior Lecturer in Psychology, Teesside University), and Dr Jan Lecouturier (Lead for the Health Determinants Research Collaboration South Tees). The discussion will be chaired by Azadeh Fatehrad, co-director of Institute for Collective Place Leadership.

This session is open to all particularly those working across policy, practice, research, and community settings and those involved in health, local government, social policy, and place-based initiatives across the North East. Places are limited, so advance RSVP is required. A light lunch will be served from 12:00, followed by the roundtable discussion from 13:00–14:30.

This roundtable is funded by University College London and is jointly organised by the Institute for Collective Place Leadership at Teesside University and the Institute for Economic and Social Inclusion at University of Sunderland. For any questions, please contact [email protected]

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