Locally engaged research
Our academics and students work on projects in and around Lewisham helping with local challenges and developments.
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Dedicated local research centres
We have two centres that bring together researchers from across Goldsmiths to work on local projects.
Centre for Community Engagement Research (CCER)
The centre aims to complement and collaborate with existing community research and engagement activities across Goldsmiths and the surrounding communities.
It has looked at Lewisham's Youth Offending Service, training for social workers, and children's services.
Centre for Urban and Community Research (CUCR)
With core expertise ranging from visual sociology to digital geo-demography, the CUCR remains central to debates about community, ecology, governance, multi-culture, citizenship, arts and media in contemporary cities.
It has looked at the role of water in city life, bowling alleys and the impact of Jamaican music.
Projects
Here is a selection of our current and recent projects.
Sound System Outernational
Goldsmiths is located in south east London, a historic centre of the capital’s sound system culture.
Sound System Outernational is an ongoing initiative of practitioners and researchers, in association with Goldsmiths, dedicated to recognising, stimulating and supporting sound system culture worldwide.
Learning from Lewisham Covid 19 Response Hub
Goldsmiths' Senior Lecturer, Dr Kalbir Shukra was commissioned by Lewisham Council and the charity Lewisham Local to report on the Lewisham Covid-19 Emergency Response Hub, which was operational from March to August 2020.
The Response Hub aimed to co-ordinate and deliver information, food and a befriending service during the national lockdown to isolated, vulnerable people with the help of partner organisations and an army of newly recruited volunteers.
Voice4Deptford
Since 2014 CCER has been collaborating with Pepys Community Forum in Deptford (south east London) in supporting local residents and community organisations to develop a voice concerning a major riverside housing and commercial development in their locality at Convoys Wharf. Using an ethnographic approach to the research, we are adapting and using a variety of methods appropriate to accumulating local knowledge and understanding the context.
Evaluation of the Fellowship Inn Project
CUCR has evaluated the renovation of the Fellowship Inn pub and its transformation into the Fellowship and Star, a new community venue in Bellingham, Lewisham that combines enterprise, heritage and community development.
It tells the story of the rebirth of the pub led by Phoenix Community Housing, a resident-led housing association that manages 6,000 homes in south Lewisham.
Bowling Together
This research started with a seemingly ordinary place, a bowling alley, used by a diverse population in terms of age, class and ethnicity.
It sought to find out: What kinds of interactions, tensions, strategies of avoidance and of negotiation, does the space engender? What are the limits to the sharing of space and how do divisions outside the bowling alley play out within?