Collaborative action research can be fertile ground for exploration, experimentation, reflection and learning. When it brings together higher education, practice and communities as research partners, it can produce new knowledge that informs teaching, practice and policy, as well as practical approaches, tools and resources for communities and practitioners. In our experience, it can also help build lasting relationships and have a profound impact on the people, organisations and communities involved.
About this Series
This new online event series, Research Rooms, is a collaboration between The Glass-House and our strategic partner, The Open University’s Design Group. These events will share learning, resources and anecdotes from the many research projects we have done together. In some sessions, we also invite others to co-host and share findings from their own projects, creating space for them to reach new audiences.
Research Rooms are informal online spaces for conversation with members of the research team from academia, practice and communities. Those attending can learn about the projects, their outputs and outcomes and the influence they have had on those involved. There will also be space to share your own experience and explorations of the project themes.
The first series of Research Room events includes:
Research Room 1: Scaling Up Co-design
21 October, 4-5 pm, online
In this session we will look back on the project, Scaling Up Co-design Research and Practice, which brought together academic and civil society partners to explore how to extend the impact and reach of our own work, to extract learning on different co-design practices, and to develop approaches and tools to help others take up and benefit from co-design.
Research Room 2: Asset-based Co-design
25 November, 4-5 pm, online
In this session, we’ll look across three research projects (Media, Community and the Creative Citizen, Unearth Hidden Assets and Comparative Asset Mapping) in which we both focused on, and developed approaches and tools to support asset mapping in the context of design and placemaking.
Research Room 3: Empowering Design Practices
27 January 2026, 4-5 pm, online
In this session we’ll look back on the project, Empowering Design Practices. This 7-year project explored the landscape of historic places of worship and communities leading change within them, with a focus on exploring, supporting and developing practical support and resources for community-led projects to transform buildings and the activities and services within them.
Research Room 4: Starting From Values
24 February 2026, 4-5 pm, online
In this session we’ll look back on the project, Starting from Values, through which we explored and co-developed creative ways of identifying, evaluating and enhancing intangible, values-related aspects of research project legacies.
Research Room 5: Incubating Civic Leadership
24 March 2026, 4-5 pm, online
In this session we will look back on Incubating Civic Leadership, a project exploring civic leadership and how different actors can be brought together to co-design ideas, innovations and actions that push boundaries and address challenges at a local and global level.
Research Room 6: Cross-pollination
28 April 2026, 4-5 pm, online
In this session we will look back on the project Cross-pollination: Growing cross-sector design collaboration in placemaking, which explored how this approach could serve place-based collaborations across sectors and engaging groups and organisations of different scales.
Research Room 7: Mapping 20-minute Neighbourhoods
23 June 2026, 4-5 pm, online
This session explores how neighbourhood environments shape access to everyday services and, in turn, influence health and inequality. Grounded in the University of Glasgow’s OPTIMA (Orienting Policy Towards Inequality Minimising Action) project, it introduces a population-scale approach to understanding “local living” across the UK. This session is co-hosted with Reese Green researcher at University of Glasgow and member of the OPTIMA research team.
How to Take Part
Research Rooms are open to anyone with an interest in the event topic. No specific experience or expertise is required. We believe that these conversations will only benefit from a wide mix of voices, interests and experiences.
These are free events, but places are limited to create space for meaningful discussion for all involved.
How to Book
Visit our Events page or click on the links above to find out more about our upcoming Research Rooms. and to register for your free place.
More Research Room events coming soon.