ESRC Impact Acceleration Account: One Story, Two Communities: A Comparative Co-design Project in Public Engagement

This project pioneers an inclusive, comparative, and participatory approach to accelerate impact derived from social science research. It uses a new children's picture book, “The Parcel's Secret Journey from Click to Delivery” — translating complex research and hidden world of logistics and warehousing, as a tool for community dialogue. Partnering with LibrariesWest (engaging mainstream children and families via member libraries) and Trowbridge Future Youth (reaching under-served youth), and with advisory support from the University's Public Engagement Unit (PEU), we will engage two complementary cohorts crucial for achieving inclusive impact. Building on the PI's prior success engaging young people with research underpinning this work (contributing to a UK Social Mobility Silver Award in 2022), this project implements a reflective, co-design feedback loop, embedding RRI principles, to generate comparative insights into enhancing engagement across diverse communities, leading to the development of a robust evidence base for a potential REF impact case study and a replicable framework for inclusive public engagement.