Engaging the local London community in your teaching: how to find out more about them

Links to help you discover more about the London community surrounding UCL and the organisations that work within them.

The below resources can inspire you to identify projects for your teaching by understanding better your local community, its assets and challenges. 

Finding community organisations in London and understanding challenges

The below resources aim to help you get a broader understanding of the local community. 

• Grassroots groups for a Fairer London on Just Map.
• My Community supports “groups and organisations running community-led projects and plans to build and strengthen communities across England”
  • Use their map to identify organisations in your local community
  • Access their resources and advice on building partnerships and engaging with the community
• The London Prosperity Board is a partnership between the UCL Institute for Global Prosperity, London Government, public agencies, businesses, the third sector, and local communities. They conduct research on prosperity in East London.
• The Trust for London produces reports with a focus on poverty and prosperity - find out about the profile of communities in London. 
• London Councils has produced a report on the future challenges of councils in London.

Resources per London borough (UCL and UCL EAST)

By going through the needs assessment of the UCL and UCL EAST boroughs, you can get creative and identify the activities and the partners that would be most suitable for meeting the learning outcomes of your programme or module.

To be used in conjunction with the toolkits:

• Five steps to developing a Community Engaged Learning programme, module or project 
• How to build partnerships with external partners to enhance learning. 

Find out more about communities in: 

• Camden: Camden Council area Community Profile by id, the population experts
• Hackney: Hackney health and wellbeing profile by the City of London 
• Newham: reports on the health and wellbeing needs of Newham residents (Joint Strategic Needs) by Newham Council 
• Tower Hamlets: reports on the health and wellbeing needs of Tower Hamlets residents (Joint Strategic Needs) by Tower Hamlets Council 
• Waltham Forest: reports on the health and wellbeing needs of Waltham Forest residents (Joint Strategic Needs) by Waltham Forest Council

Where to find inspiration

To draw more inspiration on how to collaborate with external partners and see what others in UCL are doing:

Explore case studies on the Teaching & Learning Portal (use the filter on the left for ‘community engaged learning’ for case studies relevant to this topic) 

UCL Urban Lab – partnerships 

Engineering Exchange

 

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This guide has been produced by The Community Engaged Learning Service (CELS) and the UCL Arena Centre for Research-based Education. You are welcome to use this guide if you are from another educational facility, but you must credit CELS and the UCL Arena Centre.