This week, members of the University of Glasgow’s Children’s Neighbourhoods Scotland initiative visited Queen’s Community and Place (QCAP) as part of a knowledge exchange trip. QCAP and the University of Glasgow are partners on a new ESRC funded study – Children, Learning and Inclusive Place (CLIP) – that builds on the potential of the Capabilities Framework to understand how children relate to their built environment and climate change.

As part of the visit, a range of interactive workshops was held in the QCAP offices. This included a session with Professor Muiris MacCarthaigh (International Public Policy Observatory) and Professor Ian Shuttleworth (NI Longitudinal Study), where the opportunities and challenges to democratising data were discussed. This was followed by a collaborative session on children’s rights and participation with Dr Gavin Duffy, School of SSESW, discussing the Excluded Lives Project, before a visit to QCAP’s pilot partner, the Market community, was held. This included a meeting with teachers and pupils from St. Malachy’s Primary School to discuss their climate action work and how they are redeveloping a pond on the school premises.

To conclude the visit, a walk-around tour of the Market community was conducted by Fionntán Hargey (Market Development Association). As the CLIP project evolves, further collaborative meetings between QCAP and the University of Glasgow will be arranged, with a range of co-produced material to be published toward the end of 2022.