Following discussions amongst the team, and consultation with the community stakeholders, we have finalised the thematic analysis of our data, and have arrived at five themes:
Missing Voices; Anti-social Behaviour; Connectivity and Accessibility; Maximising the Natural Capital; Big Ideas.
We have now sent the first draft of our research executive summary to our stakeholders to seek their verification of findings, thought sand comments towards the completion of the final draft. This is to insure that our findings and steps forward are a true representation of the stakeholders engagement and the that of the community groups they represent and work with. This is in spirit of the co-design nature adopted from the onset of this research.
Working in partnership with North Ayrshire Council allows the project team to feed forward the findings and community voices into the Great Harbour Project consultation towards maximising the community benefit of their local natural area. Furthermore, we have worked to identify
Working in partnership with North Ayrshire Council allows the project team to feed forward the findings and community voices into the Great Harbour Project consultation towards maximising the community benefit of their local natural area. Furthermore, we have worked to identify an area for further research where we are looking to build on the connections and partnerships we have established in this project, identify other case studies in Scotland that share similar characteristics with Irvine, and work towards the development of a larger research proposal.
At this stage, we are looking forward to the feedback from our stakeholders to further develop the executive summary and move forward to publish it here and on North Ayrshire Council Website.
I’ve been having a look at some of the data collected so far, and have been starting to think about grouping the comments and ideas into themes. These are my own preliminary thoughts prior to our next group meeting to develop themes, and they are only based on the notes from the Older Adult workshop. However there was significant overlap with the notes taken in the other workshops, and it was certainly starting to feel that we’d reached data saturation on the topic of Irvine’s harbour and seaside.
Initial groupings
Condensed groupings
We will now come together as a team and, along with our community partners, use our findings to identify the research needs of the community with respect to improving health through access to and use of blue space.
Today (16th June 2023) we held our third and final workshop as part of our British Academy seed-funding grant in partnership with North Ayrshire Council (NAC). This event was held at Vennel Gardens, a sheltered housing facility and community hub for older adults. We dropped in on their regular Friday afternoon lunch and and live music event, to ask this underrepresented group about their thoughts on the harbourside development. In line with the codesign element of this endeavour, we took the advice of our NAC Community Development colleague and replaced the intended focus group with a more informal chat while the cilents enjoyed their lunch. It was so interesting to hear the views of those who remember Irvine from war times, and to hear their concerns and suggestions for improvements. Once again, we used the plan for the redevelopment supplied by NAC to facilitate discussion, and recorded data using Post-its on the plan.
Source: North Ayrshire Council, Great Harbour Project
Many of the issues discussed through our informal chats were the same as those raised by the previous community groups, with transport, antisocial behaviour, and a lack of ‘things to do’ dominating the conversation.
Though the people we spoke to recognised that being at the seaside used to make them feel good, many expressed the view that they were now ‘too old’ to go to the beach area, and didn’t think anything would entice them back. Interestingly, when asked why they felt they were too old, the issues mentioned gave a great insight into what an older adult-friendly space might involve:
“What would I do there now?”
“There’s no shade, I’d melt if I went there”
“I just want to sit and crochet, but there’s nowhere sheltered to do that”
“It’s too windy”
The older people were more interested in improvements to the area that would benefit young people, allowing them to grow up with access to a vibrant seaside like they experienced in their younger days. However, the comments above demonstrate that for relatively little cost, the area could be made much more appealing for the older generation.
What a rewarding day – we held our second community engagement workshop for the project Health and Place in partnership with HSCP in Irvine. We worked with adults identified to be with learning disabilities along with their day carers to learn about their views of the future of the Great Harbour area and what they wish to see and do there. Also, we worked to identify the key barriers that hinder these individuals’ engagement with and use of the harbour area, and being near or in the water. The workshop was held in Trindlemoss Day Opportunities Center in Irvine on 13th June.
We have captured rich feedback on our questions and these were shared using a variety of creative methods that ranged from dialogues, post-it notes, written statements and illustrative drawings. All represented the voices of a community group that has been identified in this project to be hard to reach and often does not engage in the formal processes of master plan consultation. We will work to feed these views back to the council to inform the following stages of the Great Harbour developmnet.
Would you suggest other more effective and more creative ways to engage with adults with learning disabilities?
What do you think our next steps should be working with this community group?
We held our first community workshop today in the Maritime Museum to gather the public views on our key questions:
What would you like to see and do in the harbour or beach area?
Is there anything that stops you visiting the harbour or beach at the moment?
What do you think are the health benefits of being in or near the water?
Our pop-up consultation station was set in the Museum gift shop near the cafe and many people engaged in putting their post-it notes on the printed site map to voice their answers to these questions.
A rewarding sunny day with lots of feedback; issues of connectivity, proximity, negligence, lack of activities and antisocial behaviour where posted. Here are some of these:
“Miles away, too far to get to!”
“Massive groups of drunken youngsters on beach…”
“Create cycle route through the harbour… Bikes racks to park bikes!”
“Water taxi from the river.”
“More night-out events and avenues for adults and young people!”
In partnership with North Ayrshire Council (NAC), we met today with representatives of different organisations and groups involved in Great Harbour development and consultation process to explore their views on community groups who are hard to reach with the consultation process. We worked worked together them to co-design a community engagement workshop that is planned to take place in June. Their suggestions of engagement methods and communication language to allow a meaningful event that allows those identified groups to voice their aspirations and concerns regarding their local costal community and Great Harbour development.
The workshop was attended by representatives of NAC regeneration team, NAC community learning and development team, NHS, Police Scotland, and The Ayrshire Community Trust. Those are involved in working with elderly groups, youth groups, people with learning disabilities, people with mental health needs, sheltered housing groups, and people who have care experience.
Together with these members have identified three key groups to target with our community engagement workshop to take place in June. These are:
Parents and Carers of Children under 5 (workshop on 12th June).
Adults with Learning Disabilities (workshop on 13th June).
We are a team of early career researchers who are leading on the project of Health and Place. This is funded by the British academy Seed Fund and involves a number of universities in Scotland; Heriot Watt University, University of West Scotland and University of Aberdeen. We are working closely with community groups and their representatives to explore how to promote inclusive and accessible sea side area to promote health, wellbeing and environmental sustainability in coastal communities. We are looking to identify barriers to access and priority needs from within the coastal town of Irvine as a case study.