This document summarizes research on the high street and efforts to impact public policy. It discusses 3 case studies: 1) how knowledge about skills for sustainable communities was ignored by governments, 2) how the "big society" narrative undermined community development knowledge, and 3) how research on food banks and welfare reform is consistently ignored. It reflects on challenges of impact including losing control of the research narrative, policy preferences determining research agendas, differing definitions of impact between researchers and policymakers, and impact being more about self-presentation than influence. It proposes an agenda for impact that sees impact as provisional, challenges canonical knowledge, is inclusive of participant views, and disturbs rather than just reinforces the status quo.

1. Into the wild
what happens when research is let loose?
Julian Dobson, director, Urban Pollinators

2. 1 the curious world of public policy
2 chasing after the wind? roles and limitations
3 a few critical reflections
4 an agenda for impact?

3. PART 1: ONCE UPON A TIME ON THE HIGH STREET
THE ‘DEATH OF THE HIGH STREET’ - IS EXISTENTIAL ANGST A RESEARCH QUESTION?

4. ‘There is a concern that the High Street
shopping environment to which society has
grown accustomed, whether as shoppers,
investors, employees or entrepreneurs, is
changing and we are not sure whether we
will like either how it will change or what it
will be changed to.’
John Dawson, The Geographical Journal, 154 (1), 1988

5. I’M A CELEBRITY, GET ME INTO HERE
MAY 2011: DAVID CAMERON ANNOUNCES PORTAS REVIEW AFTER VACANCIES DOUBLE IN TWO YEARS

6. After David Cameron announced the Portas
Review in spring 2011, Urban Pollinators
convened a group of thinkers and activists
to prepare a submission focusing on the
social and multifunctional nature of the
‘high street’…

7. THE AGORA: BACK TO THE FUTURE
SUBMISSION TO THE PORTAS REVIEW: A VISION OF HIGH STREETS AS SOCIAL SPACES

8. …but it was not until late summer that the
Department for Business, Innovation and
Skills put out a call for proposals to
research the ‘drivers and barriers’ to high
street success…

9. ‘WE’D BETTER HAVE SOME EVIDENCE’
SEPT 2011: BIS COMMISSIONS EVIDENCE ON ‘DRIVERS AND BARRIERS’ TO HIGH STREET SUCCESS

10. The Portas Review, published in December
2011, called for town centres to be ‘run as
businesses’ - which government ministers
liked. It also called for all proposals for new
out of town shopping centres to go to the
secretary of state for communities and local
government for approval - which ministers
rejected.

11. THE BUTCHER, THE BAKER, THE CANDLESTICK MAKER
THE PORTAS REVIEW: TOWN TEAMS, SOCIAL SPACES AND OUT-OF-TOWN SHOPPING CENTRES

12. Instead, Grant Shapps was appointed as
‘minister for high streets’ and invited towns
to pitch for a share of a £1m fund - via
YouTube videos.

13. GRANT SHAPPS AND HIS GOLDEN TICKETS
FEB 2012: TWELVE TOWNS TO SHARE £1M REGENERATION FUND - VIA VIDEO PITCH

14. Within a year, the ‘Portas Pilots’ were being
accused by national media of wasting
money - including the incident of Dartford
Council’s Peppa Pig costume…

15. THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF PEPPA PIG
‘WE DID SPEND THAT MONEY ON A PEPPA PIG COSTUME, BUT NOBODY ASKED ABOUT THE BENEFITS’

16. Meanwhile, the academic debate was
focusing on high street ‘resilience’ - a topic
seized on by Grant Shapps’ successor,
Brandon Lewis, as evidence that high
streets were simply evolving to meet new
circumstances…

17. RESILIENCE: PUTTING A BRAVE FACE ON IT?
FUTURE HIGH STREET FORUM, 2014: HIGH STREETS ARE SHOWING ‘ADAPTIVE RESILIENCE’

18. 2015: ‘How to save our town centres’ is an
attempt to redress the balance, returning to
the ‘agora’ idea but taking it forward with
an emphasis on rethinking concepts of
‘value’…

19. REWORKING THE AGENDA: TAKING STOCK, MOVING ON?
FROM SOCIAL SPACES TO COMMUNITY OWNERSHIP - CONTESTING THE FRAME OF REFERENCE

20. …but this is just another staging post in the
long journey of evidence, argument,
policymaking and public discourse…

21. INTO THE WILD: HERE WE GO AGAIN
‘MY ALREADY WELL-THUMBED COPY IS FULL OF UNDERLININGS’ (ROB HOPKINS, TRANSITION NETWORK)

22. PART 2: CHASING AFTER THE WIND?
ROLES, RECONSTRUCTIONS AND RESULTS

23. CASE STUDY 1: SKILLS FOR SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITIES
THE EDITOR: MEDIATING EPISTEMIC COMMUNITIES

24. Case study 1: Why did Westminster
governments decide within a period of just
seven years that ‘skills for sustainable
communities’ were a top priority - and then
weren’t a priority at all? Can ‘epistemic
communities’ preserve knowledge on their
own?

25. ‘An epistemic community is a network of
professionals with recognised expertise and
competence in a particular domain and an
authoritative claim to policy-relevant
knowledge…’
Peter Haas, International Organisation, 46 (1), 1992

26. CASE STUDY 2: BIG SOCIETY OR OUR SOCIETY?
THE ACTIVIST: SEEKING TO INFLUENCE DEBATE

27. Case study 2: Why did the ‘big society’
narrative introduced by David Cameron in
2010 result in the loss of community
development and voluntary sector
knowledge? Can community activists help
to ensure research has an impact when
governments seek to negate it?

28. ‘You might wonder why those who are most
closely involved with community action should
be expressing the greatest anger at the current
government and - by association - with the Big
Society ideas. If the message of a Big Society is
so liberating, why do they sound as if they have
feel cheated and betrayed?’
‘An open letter to Nat Wei about Big Society’, 13 September 2010

29. CASE STUDY 3: FOOD, POVERTY AND WELFARE
THE RESEARCHER: WHAT HAPPENS TO KNOWLEDGE IF PEOPLE CHOOSE NOT TO LEARN?

30. Case study 3: Why do government officials
consistently ignore and seek to discredit
research on food banks and welfare reform?
Is the researcher’s job over if the research is
unwelcome?

31. ‘The risk is that people in severe need do not
know about the scheme and that, as a result,
their situations worsen. The longer any
intervention by public or voluntary services is
postponed, the more costly and less effective it
is likely to be.’
Bill Sargent Trust, The Impact of the Hampshire Local Welfare
Assistance Scheme 2013-2014

32. PART 3: SOME CRITICAL REFLECTIONS
SOME OF THE ‘WHAT IFS’ OF RESEARCH - AND HOW WE MIGHT BE ABLE TO RESPOND

33. BEYOND AUTHORIAL INTENT: LETTING GO OR HOLDING ON?
WHAT IF WE CAN’T CONTROL THE STORY?

34. ‘The power of the story does not depend on its
connection to the world outside the story but in
its openness for negotiating meaning.’
Barbara Czarniawska (2004), Narratives in social science
research

35. EVIDENCE-BASED POLICY, OR POLICY-BASED EVIDENCE?
WHAT IF THE RESEARCH AGENDA IS DETERMINED BY POLICY PREFERENCES?

36. ‘Empirical material cannot unambiguously falsify
or verify theories, but it can generate arguments
for or against the championing of theoretical
ideas and a particular way of understanding the
world.’
Mats Alvesson and Kaj Skoldberg (2009), Reflexive methodology:
new vistas in qualitative research

37. IMPACT: ARE WE SEPARATED BY A SHARED LANGUAGE?
WHAT IF OUR DEFINITION OF IMPACT IS VERY DIFFERENT FROM THOSE IN POSITIONS OF POWER?

38. ‘The report itself concludes that it can’t prove
anything - it uses self-selecting data and
recognises there are complex underlying issues.’
Department for Work and Pensions, commenting on Trussell
Trust and Oxfam GB report on food banks, November 2014

39. MIRROR, MIRROR ON THE WALL…
WHAT IF ‘IMPACT’ IS MORE ABOUT SELF-PRESENTATION THAN INFLUENCE?

40. ‘What has to be constantly scrutinised and
neutralised…is the collective scientific
unconscious embedded in theories, problems,
and…categories of scholarly judgment.’
Bourdieu and Wacquant (1992), An invitation to reflexive
sociology

41. PART 4: AN AGENDA FOR IMPACT?
IS IT POSSIBLE TO ACHIEVE IMPACT WITHOUT CAUSING HARM?

42. TAKING A LINE FOR A WALK: ‘IMPACT’ AS A BEGINNING
‘IMPACT’ AS PROVISIONAL AND UNFINISHED: CAN WE MEASURE THE PROGRESS OF IDEAS?

43. ‘The job of researchers is to clarify and
deliberate about the problems, possibilities and
risks that planning, planners, and those planned
face, and to outline how things could be done
differently. This is all in full knowledge that
ultimate answers to these questions, or even a
single version of what the questions are, cannot
be found.’
Bent Flyvbjerg, Planning Theory and Practice, 5 (3), 2004

44. CHALLENGING ‘KNOWLEDGE’: FROM CITATION TO CRITIQUE
‘IMPACT’ AS CRITICAL: ARE WE GOING BEYOND REINFORCING CANONICAL KNOWLEDGE?

45. ‘Replacing doctrines that have become
unbelievable, citation allows the technocratic
mechanisms to make themselves credible for
each individual in the name of the others. To cite
is thus to give reality to the simulacrum
produced by a power, by making people believe
that others believe in it, but without providing
any believable object.’
Michel de Certeau (1984), The practice of everyday life

46. INFLUENCE AND IMPACT: WHO SETS THE AGENDA?
‘IMPACT’ AS INCLUSIVE: ARE WE OPEN TO THE IMPACT OF OUR RESEARCH PARTICIPANTS’ VIEWS?

47. ‘Critical academics with an interest and
commitment to engagement with actors outside
the academy…have an opportunity to structure
understandings of what constitutes impact from
below…The interface between academic and
policy work, and between academia and
activism, can be particularly productive spaces
through which to create these knowledges…’
Peter North, The Geographical Journal, 179 (3), 2013

48. FOOLS, DEVIANTS AND TROUBLEMAKERS
‘IMPACT’ AS DISTURBANCE: IF OUR RESEARCH DOESN’T DISTURB, IS IT DOING ITS JOB?

49. ‘[social sciences] run the risk of losing their
autonomy from the state, unless they are
prepared to use against the state the relative
freedom that it grants them.’
Pierre Bourdieu, Sociological Theory, 12 (1), 1994

50. thank you
www.urbanpollinators.co.uk
Twitter: @juliandobson