About us
Our approach
Encouraging more equal relationships between institutions and communities, we challenge traditional models of commissioning and building evidence, supporting genuine partnerships to shape how knowledge is produced, how evidence is valued, and how policy is created.
We work with:
- policymakers at national, regional, and local levels, involving communities in shaping policy and systems.
- funders of research, innovation, and system change seeking to benefit and engage with communities.
- practitioners and researchers within and outside of academia committed to building evidence with communities.
- community representatives and organisations, building evidence to address local and societal issues.
Our agenda
The Institute for Community Studies builds evidence with communities, for communities. Our priorities and practice develop through an ongoing process of listening and collaborative priority-setting.
Our launch agenda, Safety in Numbers?, published in the wake of the pandemic in 2020. It identified questions shared with us by more than 3,000 people across the UK. Through a process of research and co-creation, we heard about the issues, opportunities and challenges people face.
Key questions include: how can communities build economic resilience? What role can they take in keeping people safe? And how can we strengthen community involvement, and find practical and policy-based solutions to local problems?
Read Safety in Numbers?
Our history
Established by sociologist Michael Young in 1953 – and revived by our CEO, Helen Goulden, in 2019 – the Institute for Community Studies is a core part of The Young Foundation.
We are an evidence centre with people at our heart, conducting research and data-driven analyses, and building rich evidence on ‘what works’ for – and what matters to – local people around the UK.
Often working with academia, the Institute identifies scalable solutions to drive social, systems and policy change. We are part of The Young Foundation, sharing passions for evidence-building, policymaking, participatory and mixed-methods research, and social innovation, to explore sustainable solutions to long-term challenges.
More on our history and founder